*f . -e
TUB PILGRIM'S VISION.
THE
INNOCENTS ABROAD,
OR
THE NEW PILGRIMS' PROGRESS;
BEING SOME ACCOUNT OF THE STEAMSHIP QUAKER CITY'S PLEASURE
EXCURSION TO EUROPE AND THE HOLY LAND; WITH
DESCRIPTIONS OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS,
INCIDENTS AND ADVENTURES,
AS THEY APPEARED.
TO THE
AUTHOR.
WITH TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS,
BY
MARK TWAIN,
(SAMtlEL L. CLEMENS.)
(ISSUED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY, AND NOT FOR SALE IN THE BOOK-STORES. RESIDENTS OF ANY STATE DESIRING
A COPY SHOULD ADDRESS THE PUBLISHERS, AND AN AGENT WILL CALL UPON THEM.)
HARTFORD, CONK.:
AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.
BLISS & CO., NEWARK, N. J. ; R. W. BLISS & CO., TOLEDO. OHIO.
F. G. OILMAN & CO., CHICAGO, ILL.; NETTLETON & CO., CINCINNATI, OHIO.
F. A. HUTCHINSON & CO., ST. LOUIS, MO.
H. IL BANCROFT AND COMPANY, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
18G9.
SHTKRSD according to Act or Congress, in the /ear i869, Ijy
AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut.
Addfl
.-<£'J
GIFT
Qsfcs
T°
^.OST ^ATIENT READER
AND
J^HAI^ITABLE CRITIC,
JHIS YOLUME is y*t FFE CTI o N ATE LY
INSCRIBED.
PREFACE.*
THIS book is a record of a pleasure-trip. If it were a record of a
solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity,
that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are
so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet not
withstanding it is only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which
is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and
the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes
of those who travelled in those countries before him. I make small
pretence of showing any one how he ought to look at objects of
interest beyond the sea — other books do that, and therefore, even
if I were competent to do it, there is no need.
I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of
travel- writing that may be charged against me — for I think I have
seen with impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least
honestly, whether wisely or not.
In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for
the Daily Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that
journal having waived their rights and given me the necessary
permission. I have also inserted portions of several letters written
for the New York Tribune and the New York Herald.
THE AUTHOR.
SAN FRANCISCO, 1869.
PAGE
1. THE QUAKER CITY IN A STORM FRONTISPIECE —
2. ILLUMINATED TITLE-PAGE — TUB PILGRIM'S VISION —
3. " I 'LL PAY You IN PARIS " 23
4. THE START 30
5. " GOOD MORNING, SIR " 34
6. THE OLD PIRATK 36
7. DANCING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 42
a THE MOCK TRIAL 44
9. " LAND, no ! " 49
10. THE CAPOTE 52
11. RUIN AND DESOLATION 53
12. PORT OF HORTA, FAYAL (FULL PAGE), PACE PAGB 56
13. " SEKKI-YAH ! " 59
14. BEAUTIFUL STRANGER 64
15. ROCK OF GIBRALTAR (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 65
16. " QUEEN'S CHAIR " 67
17. THE ORACLE 70
IS. THE INTERROGATION POINT 71
19. GARRISON AT MALABAT 72
20. ENTERTAINING AN ANGEL 74
21. Yfcw OF A STREET IN TANGIER 77
22. CHANGE FOR A NAPOLEON 81
23. THE CONSUL'S FAMILY S3
24. " POET LARIAT " 91
25. FIRST SUPPER IN FRANCE 95
26. PAINTING 96
27. RINGING FOR SOAP 99
28. " WINE, SIR ! " 100
29. THE PILGRIM 101
30. TUB PRISONER 103
31. HOMELESS FRANCE (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 106
32. RAILROAD OFFICIAL IN FRANCE 108
33. " FITE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS." A MERICA 109
ILLUSTRATIONS. vii
PAGE
84. " THIRTY MINUTES FOK DINNER." FRANCE 110
85. THE OLD TRAVELLER Ill
86. A DECIDED SHAVE 115
8T. A GAS-TLY SUBSTITUTE 117
88. THE THREE GUIDES 119
89. " ZE SILK M AQ AJJIN " 122
40. RETURN IN WAR PAINT 124
41. NAPOLEON III t 126
42. ABDUL Aziz 126
43. THE MORGUE 182
44. WE TOOK A WALK 185
45. THE CAN-CAN 186
46. GRAVES OF AUKL ARD AND HKLOISE 141
47. A PAIR OF CANONS OF 13TH CENTURY 142
48. THE PRIVATE MARRIAOK 144
49. AMERICAN DHINKS 148
50. ROYAL HONORS TO A YANKEE. 150
51. THE GRISETTE 151
52. FOUNTAIN AT VERSAILLES 154
53. WOMEN OF GENOA 161
54. PETRIFIED LACKEY 163
55. PRIEST AND FRIAR 164
56. STATUE OF COLUMBUS 168
57. GRAVES OF SIXTY THOUSAND 169
58. EOOF AND SPIRES OF CATHEDRAL AT MILAN (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 172
59. CENTRAL DOOR OF CATHEDRAL AT MILAN 173
60. INTERIOR OF CATHEDRAL AT MILAN 174
61. BOYHOOD'S EXPERIENCE 176
62. TREASURES OF THE CATHEDRAL. 179
68. CATHEDRAL AT MILAN 181
64 LA SCALA THEATRE 184
65. COPYING FROM OLD MASTERS 191
66. FACIAL EXPRESSION 194
67. THE ECHO 196
68. NOTEBOOK 197
69. A Kiss FOR A FRANO 198
70. THE FUMIGATION 200
71. LAKE COMO 202
72. GARDEN, LAKE COMO (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 204
73. SOCIAL DRIVER 207
74. WAYSIDE SHRINE 208
75. PEACE AND HAPPINESS 209
76. CASTLE OF COUNT LUIGI 210
77. THE WICKED BROTHER 216
78. DISGUSTED GONDOLIER 220
79. CATHEDRAL OF ST. MARK 7 226
80. THE PEG 229
81. " GOOD-BY " 230
82. M'SIEUR GOR-R-DONG 234
83. MONUMENT TO THE DOGE 236
84. ST. MARK. BY THE OLD MASTERS 238
85. ST. MATTHEW. BY THE OLD MASTERS 238
86. ST. JEROME. BY THE OLD MASTERS 288
87. ST. SEBASTIAN. BY THE OLD MASTERS 239
88. ST. UNKNOWN. BY THE OLD MASTERS . . 239
viii ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
89. RIALTO BRIDGE 241
90. BRIDGE OF SIGHS 241
91. FLORENCE 245
92. TUB PENSIONER 246
98. '• I WANT TO GO HOME " 248
94. TUB LEANING TOWER , 250
95. THE CONTRAST 258
96. ITALIAN PASTIMES 263
97. INCENDIARY DOCUMENT 264
98. A EOMAN OF 1S69 267
99. MAMERTINE PRISON „ 276
100. OLD ROMAN 278
101. COLISEUM OF ANCIENT ROME 281
102. DID NOT COMPLAIN 285
103. HUMBOLDT HOUSE 2S6
104. DAN 2SS
105. BRONZE STATUE 2S9
106. PENMANSHIP 291
107. ON A BUST 293
108. VAULTS OF TIIE CONTENT 299
109. DRIED CONVENT FRUITS 802
110. AT THE STORE 303
111. AT HOME 304
112. SOOTHING THE PILGRIMS 309
113. ASCENT OF MT. VESUVIUS „ 313
114 BAY OF NAPLES 316
115. THE MUSTANG 319
116. ISLAND OF CAPKI 320
117. BLUE GitoTTo 321
118. VESUVIUS AND BAY OF NAPLES (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 323
119. THE DESCENT- 825
120. RUINS, POMPEII 327
121. FORUM OF JUSTICE, POMPEII 330
122. HOUSE, POMPEII 335
123. STROMBOLI 338
124. VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS. LOOKING "WEST 341
125. " IIo !" 343
126. THE ASSAULT 344
127. THE CARYATIDES 846
128. THE PARTHENON (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 348
129. WE SIDLED, NOT RAN 350
130. ANCIENT ACROPOLIS 852
131. TAIL PIECE, RUINS 353
132. QUEEN OF GREECE 855
133. PALACE AT ATHENS 356
134. STREET SCENE IN CONSTANTINOPLE (FULL PAGE) FACE PAGE 859
135. GOOSE RANCHER 3GO
136. MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA. 863
137. TURKISH MAUSOLEUM 865
138. SLANDERED DOGS 371
139. THE CENSOR ON DUTY 374
140. TURKISH BATH 378
141. FAR-AWAY-MOSES 382
142. A FRAGMENT 385
143. TAIL-PIECE— A MEMENTO . . 886
ILLUSTRATIONS. ix
PAGE
144. YALTA FROM THE EMPEROR'S PALACE 392
145. EMPEROR OF RUSSIA 393
146. TINSEL KING 399
147. SHIP EMPEROR 404
148. THE RECEPTION 405
149. STREET SCENE ix SMYRNA. 411
150. SMYRNA, 413
151. AN APPARENT SUCCESS 416
152. DRIFTING TO STARBOARD 419
158. A SPOILED NAP 420
154. ANCIENT AMPHITHEATRE AT EPHESUS 422
155. MODERN AMPHITHEATRE AT EPHESUS 423
156. RUINS OF EPHESUS 424
157. THE JOURNEY 425
158. GRAVES OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 429
159. THE SELECTION 434
160. CAMPING OUT. . 436
161. TAIL PIECE— ARABS' TENTS 437
162. A GOOD FEEDER. 489
163. INTERESTING FKTE 440
164. SUNDAY SCHOOL GRAPES 442
165. AN OLD FOGY 445
166. RACE WITH A CAMEL 446
167. TEMPLE OF THE SUN 447
168. RUINS OF BAALBEC 449
169. HEWN STONES IN QUARRY , 450
170. MERCY 452
171. PATRON SAINT 453
172. WATER CARRIER 455
173. VIEW OF DAMASCUS, (FULL PAGE) FACE PAGE 456
174. STREET CARS OF DAMASCUS 460
175. FULL DRESSED TOURIST 466
176. IMPROMPTU HOSPITAL 474
177. THE HORSE kl BAALBEC" 476
178. OAK OF BASHAN 479
179. DANGEROUS ARAB 482
180. GRIMES ON THE WAR-PATH 483
181. TAIL-PIECE—BEDOUIN CAMP 487
182. HOME OF ANCIENT POMP 489
153. JACK 490
184. A DISAPPOINTED AUDIENCE 491
185. FIG-TREE 495
1S6. '; FARE TOO HIGH " 497
187. SYRIAN HOUSE 504
188. TIBERIAS AND SEA or GALILEE 506
189. THE GUARD 516
190. MOUNT TABOR 521
191. TAIL-PIECE— GATHERING FUEL 524
192. FOUNTAIN OF THE VIRGIN 530
193. " MADONNA-LIKE BEAUTY " 531
194. PUTNAM OUTDONE 533
195. THE BASTINADO 535
196. " I WEPT " 530
197. WANT OF DIGNITY 539
19S. AN ORIENTAL WELL . . 544
ILLUSTRATIONS,
PAGE
199. ARABS SALITTING 545
200. FREE SONS OF THE DESERT 546
201. SHECIIKM 552
2u2. TAIL PIECE — GATE OF JERUSALEM 555
203. BEGGARS IN JERUSALEM 559
204. CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE 5(54
205. GRAVE OF ADAM 566
206. VIEW OF JERUSALEM (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 574
207. THE WANDERING JEW 577
208. MOSQUE OF OMAR 5S1
209. AN EPIDEMIC f,83
210. CHARGE ON BEDOUINS 590
211. DEAD SEA 594
212. GROTTO OF THE NATIVITY (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 001
213. JAFFA (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 606
214. REAR ELEVATION OF JACK H10
215. STREET IN ALEXANDRIA fill
216. VICEROY OF EGYPT 012
217. EASTERN MONARCH 614
218. MOSES S. BEACH 615
219. ROOM No. 15 617
220. THE NILOMETER 620
221 ASCENT OP THE PYRAMIDS 622
222 HIGH HOPES FRUSTRATED 6^5
223 KING'S CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID, (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 626
224. A POWERFUL ARGUMENT 627
225. PYRAMIDS AND SPUYNX, (FULL PAGE), FACE PAGE 629
226. THE RELIC HUNTKR 630
227 THE MAMELUKE'S LKAP 631
228. WOULD NOT BE COMFORTED 633
229. TAIL PIECE, THE TRAVELER 634
230 HOMEWARD BOUND 635
231. BAD COFFEE 639
232 OUR FRIENDS THE BERMUDIANS ; 640
233. CAPTAIN DUNCAN 641
234. TAIL PIECE, FINIS 651
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Popular Talk of the Excursion— Programme of the Trip— Duly Ticketed for the
Excursion — Defection of the Celebrities 19
CHAPTER II.
Grand Preparations — An Imposing Dignitary — The European Exodus — Mr.
Blucher's Opinion — Stateroom No. 10 — The Assembling of the Clans — At
Sea at last 26
CHAPTER III.
"Averaging" the Passengers — "Far, far at Sea" — Tribulation among the
Patriarchs — Seeking Amusement under Difficulties — Five Captains in the
Ship 32
CHAPTER IV.
The Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated — Pilgrim Life at Sea — " Horse-Billiards "
—The "Synagogue" — The Writing School — Jack's "Journal" — The
"Q. C. Club" — The Magic Lantern— State Ball on Deck — Mock Trials —
Charades— Pilgrim Solemnity — Slow Music — The Executive Officer De
livers an Opinion 38
CHAPTER V.
Summer in Mid- Atlantic — An Eccentric Moon — Mr. Blucher Loses Confidence
—The Mystery of " Ship Time " — The Denizens of the Deep — " Land-
Ho!" — The First Landing on a Foreign Shore — Sensation among the
Natives — Something about the Azores Islands- -Blucher's Disastrous Din
ner — The Happy Result , . . . 47
CHAPTER YI.
Solid Information — A Fossil Community — Curious "Ways and Customs— Jesuit
Humbuggery — Fantastic Pilgrimizing — Origin of the Russ Pavement —
Squaring Accounts with the Fossils — At Sea Again 55
CHAPTER VII.
A Tempest at Night — Spain and Africa on Exhibition — Greeting a Majestic
Stranger — The Pillars of Hercules — The Rock of Gibraltar — Tiresome
Repetition — "The Queen's Chair" — Serenity Conquered — Curiosities of
the Secret Caverns — Personnel of Gibraltar — Some Odd Characters — A
Private Frolic in Africa — Bearding a Moorish Garrison (without loss of
life) — Vanity Rebuked — Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco 62
xii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
PAUB
The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco— Strange Sights — A Cradle of An
tiquity — We become Wealthy — How they Rob the Mail in Africa — The
Danger of being Opulent in Morocco 76
CHAPTER IX.
A Pilgrim in Deadly Peril — How they Mended the Clock — Moorish Punish
ments for Crime — Marriage Customs — Looking Several ways for Sunday —
Shrewd Practice of Mohammedan Pilgrims — Reverence for Cats — Bliss of
being a Consul-General 83
CHAPTER X.
Fourth of July at Sea — Mediterranean Sunset — The " Oracle " is Delivered of
an Opinion — Celebration Ceremonies — The Captain's Speech — France in
Sight — The Ignorant Native — In Marseilles — Another Blunder — Lost in
the Great City — Found Again — A Frenchy Scene 90
CHAPTER XI.
Getting "Used to it "—No Soap— Bill of Fare, Table d'hote— "An American
Sir!" — A Curious Discovery — The "Pilgrim" Bird — Strange Companion
ship — A Grave of the Living — A Long Captivity — Some of Dumas' He
roes — Dungeon of the Famous " Iron Mask." 98
CHAPTER XII.
A Holiday Flight through France — Summer Garb of the Landscape — Abroad
on the Great Plains — Peculiarities of French Cars — French Politeness —
American Railway Officials — "Twenty Mnutes to Dinner!" — Why there
are no Accidents — The "Old Travellers" — Still on the Wing — Paris at
Last — French Order and Quiet — Place of the Bastile — Seeing the Sights
— A Barbarous Atrocity — Absurd Billiards 105
CHAPTER XIII.
More Trouble — Monsieur Billfinger — Re-Christening the Frenchman — In the
Clutches of a Paris Guide — The International Exposition — Fine Military
Review — Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey. ... 118
CHAPTER XIV.
The Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame — Jean Sanspeur's Addition — Treas
ures and Sacred Relics — The Legend of the Cross — The Morgue — The
Outrageous Can- Can — Blondin Aflame — The Louvre Palace — The Great
Park — Showy Pageantry — Preservation of Noted Things 130
CHAPTER XV.
French National Burying-Ground — Among the Great Dead — The Shrine of
Disappointed Love — The Story of Abelard and Heloise — " English Spoken
Here " — " American Drinks Compounded Here " — Imperial Honors to an
American — The Over-estimated Grisette — Departure from Paris — A De
liberate Opinion Concerning the Comeliness of American Women 139
CHAPTER XVI.
Versailles — Paradise Regained — A Wonderful Park — Paradise Lost — Napole
onic Strategy 153
CONTENTS. xiii
CHAPTER XVII.
PAGB
War — The American Forces Victorious — "Home Again" — Italy in Sight —
The " City of Palaces " — Beauty of the Genoese Women — The " Stub-
Hunters " — Among the Palaces — Gifted Guide — Church Magnificence —
" Women not Admitted " — How the Genoese Live — Massive Architecture
— A Scrap of Ancient History — Graves for 60,000 159
CHAPTER XVIII.
Flying Through Italy — Marengo — First Glimpse of the Famous Cathedral —
Description of some of its Wonders — A Horror Carved in Stone — An
Unpleasant Adventure — A Good Man — A Sermon from the Tomb —
Tons of Gold and Silver — Some More Holy Relics — Solomon's Temple
Rivalled 171
CHAPTER XIX.
" Do You Wis zo Haut can be ? " — La Scala — Petrarch and Laura — Lucrezia
Borgia — Ingenious Frescoes — Ancient Roman Amphitheatre — A Clever
Delusion — Distressing Billiards — The Chief Charm of European Life — An
Italian Bath — Wanted: Soap — Crippled French — Mutilated English — The
Most Celebrated Painting in the World — Amateur Raptures — Uninspired
Critics— Anecdote— A Wonderful Echo— A Kiss for a Franc 183
CHAPTER XX.
Rural Italy by Rail — Fumigated, According to Law — The Sorrowing English
man — Night by the Lake of Como — The Famous Lake — Its Scenery —
Como compared with Tahoe — Meeting a Shipmate 199
CHAPTER XXL
The Pretty Lago di Lecco — A Carriage Drive in the Country — Astonishing
Sociability in a Coachman — A Sleepy Land — Bloody Shrines — The Heart
and Home of Priestcraft — A Thrilling Mediaeval Romance — The Birthplace
of Harlequin — Approaching Venice . 207
CHAPTER XXII.
Night in Venice — The " Gay Gondolier " — The Grand Fete by Moonlight — The
Notable Sights of Venice — The Mother of the Republics Desolate 217
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Famous Gondola — The Gondola in an Unromantic Aspect — The Great
Square of St. Mark and the Winged Lion — Snobs, at Home and Abroad —
Sepulchres of the Great Dead— A Tilt at the " Old Masters "—A Contra
band Guide — The Conspiracy — Moving Again 228
CHAPTER XXIV.
Down Through Italy by Rail — Idling in Florence — Dante and Galileo — An
Ungrateful City — Dazzling Generosity — Wonderful Mosaics — The Histori
cal Arno — Lost Again — Found Again, but no Fatted Calf Ready — The
Leaning Tower of Pisa — The Ancient Duomo — The Old Original First
Pendulum that Ever Swung — An Enchanting Echo — A New Holy
Sepulchre — A Relic of Antiquity — A Fallen Republic — At Leghorn — At
Home Again, and Satisfied, on Board the Ship — Our Vessel an Object of
Grave Suspicion — Gren. Garibaldi Visited — Threats of Quarantine 244
xiv CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXV.
PACK
The "Works of Bankruptcy — Railway Grandeur — How to Fill an Empty
Treasury — The Sumptuousness of Mother Church — Ecclesiastical Splen
dor — Magnificence and Misery — General Execration — More Magnificence
— A Good Word for the Priests — Civita Yecchia the Dismal — Off for
Rome 255
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Modern Roman on His Travels — The Grandeur of St. Peter's — Holy Relics
— Grand View from the Dome — The Holy Inquisition — Interesting Old
Monkish Frauds — The Ruined Coliseum — The Coliseum in the Days of
its Prime — Ancient Play-bill of a Coliseum Performance — A Roman
Newspaper Criticism 1700 Years Old 266
CHAPTER XXVII.
" Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday " — The Man who Never Complained
— An Exasperating Subject — Asinine Guides — The Roman Catacombs —
The Saint Whose Fervor Burst his Ribs — The Miracle of the Bleeding
Heart— The Legend of Ara Coeli 284
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Picturesque Horrors — The Legend of Brother Thomas — Sorrow Scientifically
Analyzed — A Festive Company of the Dead — The Great Vatican Museum
— Artist Sins of Omission — The Rape of the Sabines — Papal Protection of
Art — High Price of <: Old Masters " — Improved Scripture — Scale of Rank
of the Holy Personages in Rome — Scale of Honors Accorded Them — Fos
silizing — Away for Naples 298
CHAPTER XXIX.
Naples — In Quarantine at Last — Annunciation — Ascent of Mount Vesuvius
— A Two-Cent Community — The Black Side of Neapolitan Character —
Monkish Miracles — Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued — The Stranger
and the Hackman — Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side —
Ascent of Vesuvius Continued 308
CHAPTER XXX.
Ascent of Vesuvius Continued — Beautiful View at Dawn — Less Beautiful
View in the Back Streets — Ascent of Vesuvius Continued — Dwellings a
Hundred Feet High — A Motley Procession — Bill of Fare for a Pedler's
Breakfast — Princely Salaries — Ascent of Vesuvius Continued — An Aver
age of Prices— The Wonderful " Blue Grotto " — Visit to Celebrated
Localities in the Bay of Naples — The Poisoned " Grotto of the Dog " — A
Petrified Sea of Lava — The Ascent Continued — The Summit Reached —
Description of the Crater — Descent of Vesuvius 315
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Buried City of Pompeii — How Dwellings Appear that have been Unoccu
pied for Eighteen Hundred Years — The Judgment Seat — Desolation — The
Footprints of the Departed — "No Women Admitted" — Theatres, Bake-
shops, Schools, etc. — Skeletons Preserved by the Ashes and Cinders — The
Brave Martyr to Duty — Rip Van Winkle — The Perishable Nature of
Fame 327
CONTENTS. XY
CHAPTER XXXII.
PA6K
At Sea Once More — The Pilgrims all Well — Superb Stromboli — Sicily by
Moonlight— Scylla and Charybdis— The " Oracle " at Fault— Skirting the
Isles of Greece — Ancient Athens — Blockaded by Quarantine and Refused
Permission to Enter — Running the Blockade — A Bloodless Midnight Ad
venture — Turning Robbers from Necessity — Attempt to Carry the Acrop
olis by Storm— We Fail—Among the Glories of the Past— A World of
Ruined Sculpture — A Fairy Vision — Famous Localities — Retreating in
Good Order — Captured by the Guards — Travelling in Military State — Safe
on Board Again 337
CHAPTER XXXHL
Modern Greece — Fallen Greatness — Sailing Through the Archipelago and the
Dardanelles — Footprints of History — The First Shoddy Contractor of
whom History gives any Account — Anchored Before Constantinople —
Fantastic Fashions — The Ingenious Goose-Rancher — Marvellous Cripples
— The Great Mosque — The Thousand and One Columns — The Grand
Bazaar of Stamboul 354
CHAPTER XXXIY.
Scarcity of Morals and Whiskey — Slave-Girl Market Report — Commercial
Morality at a Discount — The Slandered Dogs of Constantinople — Ques
tionable Delights of Newspaperdom in Turkey — Ingenious Italian
Journalism — No More Turkish Lunches Desired — The Turkish Bath
Fraud — The Narghileh Fraud — Jaekplaned by a Native — The Turkish
Coffee Fraud 368
CHAPTER XXXY.
Sailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea — " Far- A way Moses " —
Melancholy Sebastopol — Hospitably Received in Russia — Pleasant Eng
lish People — Desperate Fighting — Relic Hunting — How Travellers Form
" Cabinets " 381
CHAPTER XXXYI.
Nine Thousand Miles East — Imitation American Town in Russia — Gratitude
that Came Too Late— To Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias 387
\
CHAPTER XXXVIL
Summer Home of Royalty — Practising for the Dread Ordeal — Committee on
Imperial Address — Reception by the Emperor and Family — Dresses of
the Imperial Party — Concentrated Power — Counting the Spoons — At the
Grand Duke's— A Charming Villa — A Knightly Figure — The Grand
Duchess — A Grand Ducal Breakfast — Baker's Boy, the Famine-Breeder —
Theatrical Monarchs a Fraud — Saved as by Fire — The Governor-Gen
eral's Visit to the Ship — Official "Style " — Aristocratic Visitors — "Mun-
chausenizing " with Them — Closing Ceremonies 390
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Return to Constantinople — We Sail for Asia — The Sailors Burlesque the
Imperial Visitors — Ancient Smyrna — The " Oriental Splendor " Fraud —
The "Biblical Crown of Life "—Pilgrim Prophecy-Savans— Sociable
Armenian Girls — A Sweet Reminiscence — "The Camels are Coming,
Ha-hal".. ... 403
xvi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
PAGE
Smyrna's Lions— The Martyr Polycarp— The " Seven Churches "—Remains
of the Six Smyrnas — Mysterious Oyster Mine — Oysters Seeking Scen
ery — A Millerite Tradition — A Railroad Out of its Sphere 412
CHAPTER XL.
Journeying Toward Ancient Ephesus — Ancient Ayassalook — The Yillanous
Donkey — A Fantastic Procession — Bygone Magnificence — Fragments of
History — The Legend of the Seven Sleepers 418
CHAPTER XLI.
Vandalism Prohibited — Angry Pilgrims — Approaching Holy Land! — The
"Shrill Note of Preparation — Distress About Dragomans and Transporta
tion — The "Long Route" Adopted — In Syria — Something about Beirout
-A Choice Specimen of a Greek " Ferguson " — Outfits — Hideous Horse
flesh—Pilgrim " Style "—What of Aladdin's Lamp ? 430
CHAPTER XLII.
'•Jacksonville," in the Mountains of Lebanon — Breakfasting above a Grand
Panorama — The Vanished City — The Peculiar Steed, "Jericho" — The
Pilgrim's Progress — Bible Scenes — Mount Hermon, Joshua's Battle-
Fields, etc.— The Tomb of Noah— A Most Unfortunate People 438
CHAPTER XLIII.
Patriarchal Customs — Magnificent Baalbec — Description of the Ruins — Scrib
bling Smiths and Joneses — Pilgrim Fidelity to the Letter of the Law — The
Revered Fountain of Baalam's Ass 445
CHAPTER XLIV.
Extracts from Note-Book — Mahomet's Paradise and the Bible's — Beautiful Da
mascus, the Oldest City on Earth — Oriental Scenes within the Curious Old
City — Damascus Street Car — The Story of St. Paul — The "Street called
Straight " — Mahomet's Tomb and St. George's — The Christian Massacre —
Mohammedan Dread of Pollution — The House of Naaman — The Horrors
of Leprosy 454
CHAPTER XLV.
The Cholera by way of Variety — Hot — Another Outlandish Procession — Pen-
and-ink Photograph of " Jonesborough," Syria — Tomb of Nimrod, the
Mighty Hunter — The Stateliest Ruin of All — Stepping over the Borders
of Holy Land — Bathing in the Sources of Jordan — More " Specimen "-
Hunting— Ruins of Cesarea-Philippi— " On This Rock Will I Build my
Church " — The People the Disciples Knew — The Noble Steed u Baalbec "
— Sentimental Horse Idolatry of the Arabs 465
CHAPTER XLVI.
Dan — Bashan — Genessaret — A Notable Panorama — Smallness of Palestine —
Scraps of History — Character of the Country — Bedouin Shepherds —
Glimpses of the Hoary Past — Mr. Grimes's Bedouins — A Battle-Ground
of Joshua — That Soldier's Manner of Fighting — Barak's Battle — The
Necessity of Unlearning Some Things — Desolation 478
CONTENTS. xvii
CHAPTER XLVII.
PAGE
Jack's Adventure — Joseph's Pit — The Story of Joseph — Joseph's Magnanim
ity and Esau's — The Sacred Lake of Genessaret — Enthusiasm of the Pil
grims — Why We did not Sail on Galilee — About Capernaum — Concerning
the Saviour's Brothers and Sisters — Journeying toward Magdala 488
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Curious Specimens of Art and Architecture — Public Reception of the Pilgrims
— Mary Magdalen's House — Tiberias and its Queer Inhabitants — The Sa
cred Sea of Galilee — Galilee by Night, 503
CHAPTER XLIX.
Tho Ancient Baths — Ye Apparition — A Distinguished Panorama — The Last
Battle of the Crusades — The Story of the Lord of Kerak — Mount Tabor —
What one Sees from its Top — A Memory of a Wonderful Garden — The
House of Deborah the Prophetess 514
CHAPTER L.
Toward Nazareth — Bitten By a Camel — Grotto of the Annunciation, Nazareth
— Noted Grottoes in General — Joseph's Workshop — A Sacred Bowlder —
The Fountain of the Virgin — Questionable Female Beauty — Literary Cu
riosities 525
CHAPTER LI.
The Boyhood of the Saviour — Unseemly Antics of Sober Pilgrims — Home of
the Witch of Endor — Nain — Profanation — A Popular Oriental Picture —
Biblical Metaphors Becoming steadily More Intelligible — The Shuuem
Miracle — The " Free Son of The Desert " — Ancient Jezrtel — Jehu's
Achievements — Samaria and its Famous Siege 537
CHAPTER LIT.
A Curious Remnant of the Past — Shechem — The Oldest " First Family " on
P^arth — The Oldest Manuscript Extant — The Genuine Tomb of Joseph —
Jacob's Well — Shiloh — Camping with the Arabs — Jacob's Ladder — More
Desolation — Ramah, Beroth, the Tomb of Samuel, the Fountain of Beira
— Impatience — Approaching Jerusalem — The Holy City in Sight — Noting
its Prominent Features — Domiciled Within the Sacred Walls 551
CHAPTER LIII.
" The Joy of the Whole Earth " — Description of Jerusalem — Church of the
Holy Sepulchre — The Stone of Unction — The Grave of Jesus — Graves
of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea — Places of the Apparition — The
Finding of the Three Crosses — The Legend — Monkish Impostures — Tho
Pillar of Flagellation — The Place of a Relic — Godfrey's Sword--" The
Bonds of Christ" — "The Center of the Earth" — Place whence the Dust
was taken of which Adam was Made — Grave of Adam — The Martyred
Soldier — The Copper Plate that was On the Cross — The Good St. Helena
— Place of the Division of the Garments — St. Dimas, the Penitent Thief —
The Late Emperor Maximilian's Contribution — Grotto wherein the Crosses
were Found, and the Nails, and the Crown of Thorns — Chapel of the
Mocking — Tomb of Melchizedek — Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders
—The Place of the Crucifixion 558
xviii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER LIY.
PAGE
The " Sorrowful Way "—The Legend of St. Veronica's Handkerchief— An Il
lustrious Stone — House of the Wandering Jew — The Tradition of the
Wanderer — Solomon's Temple — Mosque of Omar — Moslem Traditions —
" Women not Admitted " — The Fate of a Gossip — Turkish Sacred Relics
— Judgment Seat of David and Saul — Genuine Precious Remains of
Solomon's Temple — Surfeited with Sights — The Pool of Siloam — The Gar
den of Gethsemane and Other Sacred Localities 574
CHAPTER LY.
Rebellion in the Camp — Charms of Nomadic Life — Dismal Rumors — En Route
for Jericho and The Dead Sea — Pilgrim Strategy — Bethany and the Dwell
ing of Lazarus — "Bedouins!" — Ancient Jericho — Misery — The Night
March — The Dead Sea — An Idea of What a "Wilderness " in Palestine is
— The Holy Hermits of Mars Saba — Good St. Saba — Women not Admit
ted — Buried from the World for all Time — Unselfish Catholic Benevolence
— Gazelles — The Plain of the Shepherds — Birthplace of the Saviour,
Bethlehem — Church of the Nativity — Its Hundred Holy Places — The Fa
mous " Milk " Grotto — Tradition — Return to Jerusalem — Exhausted. . . . 586
CHAPTER LVI.
Departure from Jerusalem — Samson — The Plain of Sharon — Arrival at Joppa
— House of Simon the Tanner — The Long Pilgrimage Ended — Character
of Palestine Scenery — The Curse 604
CHAPTER LYII.
The Happiness of being at Sea once more — " Home" as it is in a Pleasure-
Ship— " Shaking Hands" with the Yessel — Jack in Costume — His Fa
ther's Parting Advice — Approaching Egypt — Ashore in Alexandria — A
Deserved Compliment for the Donkeys — Invasion of the Lost Tribes of
America — End of the Celebrated "Jaffa Colony" — Scenes in Grand Cai-
ro^-Shepheard's Hotel Contrasted with a Certain American Hotel — Pre
paring for the Pyramids 609
CHAPTER LYIII.
"Recherche " Donkeys — A Wild Ride — Specimens of Egyptian Modesty — Mo
ses in the Bulrushes — Place where the Holy Family Sojourned — Distant
view of the Pyramids — A Nearer Yiew — The Ascent — Superb View
from the top of the Pyramid — "Backsheesb! Backsheesh ! " — An Arab
Exploit — In the Bowels of the Pyramid — Strategy — Reminiscence of
"Holiday's Hill" — Boyish Exploit — The Majestic Sphynx — Things the
Author will not Tell — Grand Old Egypt. . , 618
CHAPTER LIX.
Going Home — A Demoralized Note-Book — A Boy's Diary — Mere Mention of
Old Spain — Departure from Cadiz — A Deserved Rebuke — The Beautiful
Madeiras — Tabooed — In the Delightful Bermudas — An English Welcome
— Good-by to "Our Friends the Bermudians " — Packing Trunks for Home
— Our First Accident — The Long Cruise Drawing to a Close — At Home
Amen 635
CHAPTER LX.
Thankless Devotion — A Newspaper Valedictory — Conclusion 638
CHAPTER I.
FOE months the great Pleasure Excursion to Europe and
the Holy Land was chatted about in the newspapers
every where in America, and discussed at countless firesides.
It was a novelty in the way of Excursions — its like had not
been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which
attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic
on a gigantic scale. The participants in it, instead of freight
ing an ungainly steam ferry-boat with youth and beauty and
pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some obscure creek to
disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with
a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression
that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with
flags flying and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday
beyond the broad ocean, in many a strange clime and in many
a land renowned in history! They were to sail for months
over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean ; they
were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with
shouts and laughter — or read novels and poetry in the shade
of the smoke-stacks, or watch for the jelly-fish and the nau
tilus, over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other strange
monsters of the deep ; and at night they were to dance in the
open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a ball-room that
stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bend
ing heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars
and the magnificent moon — dance, and promenade, and
smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies for con
stellations that never associate with the " Big Dipper " they
20 A SEDUCTIVE PROGRAMME.
were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of twenty
navies — the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples
— the great cities of half a world — they were to hob-nob with
nobility and hold friendly converse with kings and princes,
Grand Moguls, and the anointed lords of mighty%empires !
It was a brave conception ; it was the offspring of a most
ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed
it : the bold originality, the extraordinary character, the seduc
tive nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked com
ment every where and advertised it in every household in the
land. Who could read the programme of the excursion with
out longing to make one of the party ? I will insert it here.
It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book, noth
ing could be better :
EXCURSION" TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, THE CRIMEA, GREECE,
AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST.
BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867.
The undersigned will make an excursion as above during the coming season, and
begs to submit to you the following programme:
A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and capable of accommo
dating at least one hundred arid fifty cabin passengers, will be selected, in 'which
will be taken a select company, numbering not more than three-fourths of the ship's
capacity. There is good reason to believe that this company can be easily made
up in this immediate vicinity, of mutual friends and acquaintances.
The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort, including library and
musical instruments.
An experienced physician will be on board.
Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant route will be taken
across the Atlantic, and passing through the group of Azores, St. Michael will be
reached in about ten days. A day or two will be spent here, enjoying the fruit and
wild scenery of these islands, and the voyage continued, and Gibraltar reached in
three or four days.
A day or two will be spent here in looking over the wonderful subterraneous
fortifications, permission to visit these galleries being readily obtained.
From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France, Marseilles will be
reached in three days. Here ample time will be given not only to look over the city,
which was founded six hundred years before the Christian era, and its artificial port,
the finest of the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the Great Ex
hibition ; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying intermediate, from the heights of
A SEDUCTIVE PROGRAMME. 21
which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc and the Alps can be distinctly seen. Passen
gers who may wish to extend the time at Paris can do so, and, passing down
through Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at Genoa.
From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists will have an
opportunity to look over this, the "magnificent city of palaces," and visit the birth
place of Columbus, twelve miles oft', over a beautiful road built by Napoleon I.
From this point, excursions may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or
to Milan, Verona, (famous for its extraordinary fortifications,) Padua, and Venice.
Or, if passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for Correggio's frescoes,) and Bo
logna, they can by rail go on to Florence, and rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus
spending about three weeks amid the cities most famous for art in Italy.
From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast in one night, and
time appropriated to this point in which to visit Florence, its palaces and galleries;
Pisa, its Cathedral and "Leaning Tower," and Lucca and its baths, and Roman
amphitheatre ; Florence, the most remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles.
From Leghorn to Naples, (calling at Civita Vecchia to land any who may prefer
to go to Rome from that point,) the distance will be made in about thirty-six hours;
the route will lay along the coast of Itaty, close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica.
Arrangements have been made to take on board at Leghorn a pilot for Caprera,
and, if practicable, a call will be made there to visit the home of Garibaldi.
Rome, [by rail] Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Virgil's tomb, and possibly,
the ruins of Psestum, can be visited, as well as the beautiful surroundings of Naples
and its charming bay.
The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful city of Sicily,
which will be reached in one night from Naples. A day will be spent here, and
leaving in the evening, the course will be taken towards Athens.
Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the group of ^Eolian
Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both active volcanoes, through the Straits
of Messina, with "Scylla" on the one hand and "Charybdis" on the other, along
the east coast of Sicily, and in sight of Mount yEtna, along the south coast of Italy,
the west and south coast of Greece,- in sight of ancient Crete, up Athens Gulf, and
into the Pirrcus, Athens will be reached in two and a half or three days. After
tarrying here awhile, the Bay of Salamis will be crossed, and a day given to Cor
inth, whence the voyage will be continued to Constantinople, passing on the way
through the Grecian Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, an^ the
moutii of the Golden Horn, and arriving in about forty-eight hours from Athens.
After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through the beautiful
Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and Balaklava, a run of about
twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to remain two days, visiting the harbors,
fortifications, and battle-fields of the Crimea ; thence back through the Bosphorus,
touching at Constantinople to take in any who may have preferred to remain there;
down through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, along the coasts of ancient
Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which will be reached in two or two and a half
days from Constantinople. A sufficient stay will be made here to give opportunity
of visiting Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.
From Smyrna towards the Holy Laud the course will lay through the Grecian
22 A SEDUCTIVE PROGRAMME.
Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast of Asia, ancient Pam-
phylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirout will be reached in three days. At Beirout
time will be given to visit Damascus ; after which the steamer will proceed to
Joppa.
From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias, Nazareth, Beth
any, Bethlehem, and other points of interest in the Holy Land can be visited, and
here those who may have preferred to make the journey from Bierout through the
country, passing through Damascus, Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria, and by the
River Jordan and Sea of Tiberias, can rejoin the steamer.
Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be Alexandria, which will
be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins of C;esar's Palace, Pompey's Pillar,
Cleopatra's Needle, the Catacombs, and ruins of ancient Alexandria, will be found
worth the visit. The journey to Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by rail, can be
made in a few hours, and from which can be visited the site of ancient Memphis,
Joseph's Granaries, and the Pyramids.
From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling at Malta, Cagliari
(in Sardinia,) and Parma (in Majorca,) all magnificent harbors, with charming
scenery, and abounding in fruits.
A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma in the evening.
Valencia in Spain will be reached the next morning. A few days will be spent in
this, the finest city of Spain. „
From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued, skirting along the coast
of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena, Palos, and Malaga, will be passed but a mile or
two distant, and Gibraltar reached in about twenty-four hours.
A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage continued to Madeira,
which will be reached in about three days. Captain Marryatt writes : <: I do not
know a spot on the globe which so much astonishes and delights upon first arrival
as Madeira." A stay of one or two days will be made here, which, if time per
mits, may be extended, and passing on through the islands, and probably in sight
of the Peak of TerierifFc, a southern track wi 1 be taken, and the Atlantic crossed
within the latitudes of the Northeast trade winds, where mild and pleasant weather,
and a smooth sea, can always be expected.
A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this route homeward, and
will be reached in about ten days from Madeira, and after spending a short time
with our friends the Bermudians, the final departure will be made for home, which
will be reached in about three days.
Alreadj-, applications have been received from parties in Europe wishing to join
the Excursion there.
The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists, if sick, will be sur
rounded by kind friends, and have all possible comfort and sympathy.
Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named in the programme,
such ports will be passed, and others of interest substituted.
The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each adult passenger.
Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables apportioned in the order in which pas
sages are engaged, and no passage considered engaged until ten per cent, of the
passage money is deposited with the treasurer.
A SEDUCTIVE PROGRAMME. 23
Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports, if they desire, with
out additional expense, and all boating at the expense of the ship.
All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the most perfect
arrangements be made for starting at the appointed time.
Applications for passage must be approved by the committee before tickets are
issued, and can be made to the undersigned.
Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers during the voyage,
may be brought home in the steamer free of charge.
Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair calculation to make for
all traveling expenses on shore, and at the various points where passengers may
wish to leave the steamer for days at a time.
The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by unanimous vote of the
passengers.
CHAS. C. DUNCAN,
117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK.
R. R. G****** Treasurer.
COMMITTEE ON APPLICATIONS.
j. T. H*****, ESQ., R. R. G***** ESQ., C. C. DUNCAN.
COMMITTEE ON SELECTING STEAMER.
CAPT. W. W. S****. Surveyor for Board of Underwriters.
C. W. C*******, Consulting Engineer for U. S. and Canada.
j T H*****) ESQ.
C. C. DUNCAN.
P. S. — The very beautiful and substantial side wheel steamship " Quaker City "
has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave New York, June 8th. Letters
have been issued by the government commending the party to courtesies abroad.
What was there lacking about that programme, to make it
perfectly irresistible ? Nothing, that any finite mind could
discover. Paris, England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy-
Garibaldi ! The Grecian archipelago ! Vesuvius ! Constanti
nople ! Smyrna ! The Holy Land ! Egypt and " our friends
the Bermudians !" People in Europe desiring to join the Ex
cursion — contagious sickness to be avoided — boating at the
expense of the ship — physician on board — the circuit of the
globe to be made if the passengers unanimously desired it—
the company to be rigidly selected by a pitiless " Committee
on Applications " — the vessel to be as rigidly selected by
as pitiless a " Committee on Selecting Steamer." Human
24 ENROLLED AMONG THE
nature could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I
hurried to the Treasurer's office and deposited my ten per
cent. I rejoiced to know that a few vacant state-rooms were
still left. I did avoid a critical personal examination into my
character, by that bowelless committee, but I referred to all
the people of high standing I could think of in the community
who would be least likely to know any thing about me.
Shortly a supplementary programme was issued which set
forth that the Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used
on board the ship. I then paid the balance of rny passage
money.
I was provided with a receipt, and duly and officially ac
cepted as an excursionist. There was happiness in that, but
it was tame compared to the novelty of being " select."
This supplementary programme also instructed the excur
sionists to provide themselves with light musical instruments
for amusement in the ship; with saddles for Syrian travel;
green spectacles and umbrellas; veils for Egypt; and substan
tial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy Land.
Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship's library
would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be
well if each passenger would provide himself with a few
guide-books, a Bible and some standard works of travel. A
list was appended, which consisted chiefly of books relating to
the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part of the excursion
and seemed to be its main feature.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the
expedition, but urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea.
There were other passengers who could have been spared bet
ter, and would have been spared more willingly. Lieut. Gen.
Sherman was to have been of the party, also, but the Indian
war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular actress
had entered her name on the ship's books, but something inter
fered, and she couldn't go. The " Drummer Boy of the Poto
mac" deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left !
However, we wrere to have a " battery of guns " from the
Navy Department, (as per advertisement,) to be used in
ENROLLED AMONG THE "SELECT." 25
answering royal salutes ; and the document furnished by the
Secretary of the Navy, which was to make " Gen. Sherman
and party " welcome guests in the courts and camps of the
old world, was still left to us, though both document and bat
tery, I think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august
proportions. However, had not we the seductive programme,
still, with its Paris, its Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem,
Jericho, and "our friends the Bermudians?" What did we
care?
CHAPTEE II.
/OCCASIONALLY, during the following month, I dropped
^~s in at 117 Wall-street to inquire how the repairing and
refurnishing of the vessel was coming on ; how additions to
the passenger list were averaging ; how many people the com
mittee were decreeing not " select," every day, and banishing
in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we
were to have a little printing-press on board and issue a daily
newspaper of Our own. I was glad to learn that our piano,
our parlor organ and our melodeon were to be the best instru
ments of the kind that could be had in the market. I was
proud to observe that among our excursionists were three min
isters of the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies,
several military and naval chieftains with sounding titles,
an ample crop of " Professors " of various kinds, and a gentle
man who had " COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering after his name
in one awful blast ! I had carefully prepared myself to take
rather a back seat in that ship, because of the uncommonly
select material that would alone be permitted to pass through
the camel's eye of that committee on credentials ; I had
schooled myself to expect an imposing array of military and
naval heroes, and to have to set that back seat still further
back in consequence of it, may be ; but I state frankly that I
was all unprepared for $.& crusher.
I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing.
I said that if that potentate raws* go over in our ship, why, I
supposed he must — but that to my thinking, when the United
AN OFFICIAL COLOSSUS. 27
States considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that ton
nage across the ocean, it would be in better taste, and safer,
to take him apart and cart him over in sections, in several
ships.
Ah, if I had only known, then, that he was only a common
mortal, and that his mission had nothing more overpowering
about it than the collecting of seeds, and uncommon yams and
extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs for that poor,
useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil, the Smithsonian Insti
tute, I would have felt so much relieved.
During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of
being for once in my life drifting with the tide of a great
popular movement. Every body was going to Europe — I, too,
was going to Europe. Every body was going to the famous
Paris Exposition — I, too, was going to the Paris Exposition.
The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the vari
ous ports of the country at the rate of four or five thousand a
week, in the aggregate. If I met a dozen individuals, during
that month, who were not going to Europe shortly, I have no
distinct remembrance of it now. I walked about the city a
good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, wrho was booked for the
excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated,
companionable ; but he was not a man to set the river on fire.
He had the most extraordinary notions about this European
exodus, and came at last to consider the whole nation as pack
ing up for emigration to France. "We stepped into a store in
Broadway, one day, where he bought a handkerchief, and when
the man could not make change, Mr. B. said:
" Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris."
" But I am not going to Paris."
"How is — what did I understand you to say?"
" I said I am not going to Paris."
" Not going to Paris ! Not g — well then, where in the na
tion are you going to ?"
" Nowhere at all."
" Not any where whatsoever ? — not any place on earth but
this?"
28 MR. BLUCHER'S OPINION.
" Not any place at all but just this — stay here all summer."
My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store
without a word — walked out with an injured look upon his
countenance. Up the street apiece he broke silence and said
impressively: " It was a lie — that is my opinion of it !"
"I'LL PAY YOU IN PAH1S."
In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her pas
sengers. I was introduced to the young gentleman who was
to be my room mate, and found him to be intelligent, cheerful
of spirit, unselfish, full of generous impulses, patient, consid
erate, and wonderfully good-natured. Not any passenger that
sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his indorsement of
what I have just said. We selected a state-room forward of
SEA-GOING LODGINGS. 29
the wheel, on the starboard side, " below decks." It had two
berths in it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a wash-bowl in it,
and a long, sumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do
service as a sofa — partly, and partly as a hiding-place for our
things. Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still
room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with
entire security to the cat. However, the room was large, for
a ship's state-room, and was in every way satisfactory.
The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early
in June.
A little after noon, on that distinguished Saturday, I reached
the ship and went on board. Al! was bustle and confusion.
[I have seen that remark before, somewhere.] The pier was
crowded with carriages and men ;• passengers were arriving
and hurrying on board ; the vessel's decks were encumbered
with trunks and valises ; groups of excursionists, arrayed in
unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a driz
zling rain anr} looking as droopy and woe-begone as so many
molting chidkins. The gallant flag was up. but it was under
the spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened by the mast.
Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest spectacle ! It was a pleas
ure excursion — there was no gainsaying that, because the
programme said so^ — it was so nominated in the bond — but it
surely hac)n't the general aspect of one.
Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting and
hissing of steam, rang the order to " cast off!" — a sudden rush
to the gangways — a scampering ashore of visitors — a revolu
tion of the wheels, and we were off — the pic-nic was begun !
Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping crowd on the
pier ; we answered them gently from the slippery decks ; the
flag made an effort to wave, and failed ; the " battery of guns"
spake not — the ammunition was out.
We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to an
chor. It was still raining. And not only raining, but storming.
"Outside" we could see, ourselves, that there was a tre
mendous sea on. We must lie still, in the calm harbor, till
the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed from fifteen
30
CAST OFF.
THE START.
States ; only a few of them had ever been to sea before ; mani
festly it would not do to -pit them against a full-blown tempest
until they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two
steam-tugs that had accompanied us with a rollicking cham
pagne-party of young New Yorkers on board who wished
to bid farewell to one of our number in due and ancient
form, departed, and we were alone on the deep. On deep
five fathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in
the solemn rain, at that. This was pleasuring with a ven
geance.
It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for
prayer meeting. The first Saturday night of any other pleas
ure excursion might have been devoted to whist and dan
cing ; but I submit it to the unprejudiced mind if it would
have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivolities,
considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind
"CAST OFF." 31
we were in. "We would have shone at a wake, but not at
any thing more festive.
However, there is always a cheering influence about the
sea ; and in my berth, that night, rocked by the measured
swell of the waves, and lulled by the murmur of the distant
surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all consciousness of the
dreary experiences of the day and damaging premonitions of
the future.
CHAPTER III.
ALL day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a
great deal, but the sea had not. It was still piling its
frothy hills high in air " outside," as we could plainly see with
the glasses. We could not properly begin a pleasure excur
sion on Sunday; we could not offer untried stomachs to so
pitiless a sea as that. We must lie still till Monday. And
we did. But we had repetitions of church and prayer-meet
ings ; and so, of course, we were just as eligibly situated as we
could have been any where.
I was up early that Sabbath morning, and was early to
breakfast. I felt a perfectly natural desire to have a good,
long, unprejudiced look at the passengers, at a time when they
should be free 'from self-consciousness — which is at breakfast,
when such a moment occurs in the lives of human beings at
all.
I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people — I
might almost say, so many venerable people. A glance at the
long lines of heads was apt to make one think it was all gray.
But it was not. There was a tolerably fair sprinkling -of
young folks, and another fair sprinkling of gentlemen and
ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither actu
ally old or absolutely young.
The next morning, we weighed anchor and went to sea. It
was a great happiness to get away, after this dragging,
dispiriting delay. I thought there never was such gladness in
the air before, such brightness in the sun, such beauty in the
UNDER WAY "FOR GOOD." 33
sea. I was satisfied with the picnic, then, and with all its
belongings. All my malicious instincts were dead within me ;
and as America faded out of sight, I think a spirit of charity
rose up in their place that was as boundless, for the time being,
as the broad ocean that was heaving its billows about us. I
wished to express my feelings — I wished to lift up my voice
and sing ; but I did not know any thing to sing, and so I was
obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the ship though,
perhaps.
It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough.
One could not promenade without risking his neck ; at one
moment the bowsprit was taking a deadly aim at the sun in
mid-heaven, and at the next it was trying to harpoon a shark
in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird sensation it is to
feel the stern of a ship sinking swiftly from under you and see
the bow climbing high away among the clouds ! One's safest
course, that day, was to clasp a railing and hang on ; walking
was too precarious a pastime.
By some happy fortune I was not seasick. — That was a
thing to be proud of. I had not always escaped before. If
there is one thing in the world that will make a man pecu
liarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to have his stomach
behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades
are seasick. Soon, a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and
bandaged like a mummy, appeared at the door of the after
deck-house, and the next lurch of the ship shot him into my
arms. I said :
" Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day."
He put his hand on his stomach and said, " Oh, my !"
and then staggered away and fell over the coop of a sky
light.
Presently another old gentleman was projected from the
same door, with great violence. I said :
" Calm yourself, Sir — There is no hurry. It is a fine day,
Sir."
He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said " Oh, my !"
and reeled away.
3
34: TRIBULATION AMONG THE PATRIARCHS.
In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly
from the same door, clawing at the air for a saving support.
I said :
" Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You
were about to say — "
" GOOD MOKX1XG, SIR.
"Oh, my!"
I thought so. I anticipated him, any how. I staid there
and was bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour perhaps ;
and all I got out of any of them was " Oh, my !"
I went away, then, in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a
good pleasure excursion. I like it. The passengers are not
garrulous, but still they are sociable. I like those old people,
TRANSGRESSING THE LAWS. 35
but somehow they all seem to have the " Oh, my " rather
bad.
I knew what was the matter with them. They were sea
sick. And I was glad of it. "We all like to see people sea
sick when we are not, ourselves. Playing whist 'by the cabin
lamps when it is storming outside, is pleasant ; walking the
quarter-deck in the moonlight, is pleasant ; smoking in the
breezy foretop is pleasant, when one is not afraid to go up
there ; but these are all feeble and commonplace compared with
the joy of seeing people suffering the miseries of seasickness.
I picked up a good deal of information during the after
noon. At one time I was climbing up the quarter-deck when
the vessel's stern was in the sky ; I was smoking a cigar and
feeling passably comfortable. Somebody ejaculated :
" Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there —
No SMOKING ABAFT THE WHEEL!"
It was Capt. Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went for
ward, of course. I saw a long spy-glass lying on a desk in one
of the upper-deck state-rooms back of the pilot-house, and
reached after it — there was a ship in the distance :
" Ah, ah— hands off! Come out of that !"
I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep — but in a low
voice :
" Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the
discordant voice ?"
" It's Capt. Bursley — executive officer — sailing-master."
I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something
better to do, fell to carving a railing with my knife. Some
body said, in an insinuating, admonitory voice :
"Now say — my friend — don't you know any better than
to be whittling the ship all to pieces that way ? You ought to
know better than that."
I went back and found the deck-sweep :
" Who is that smooth-faced animated outrage yonder in the
fine clothes?"
" That's Capt. L****, the owner of the ship— he's one of
the main bosses."
36 TRANSGRESSING THE LAWS.
In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of
the pilot-house, and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now,
I said, they " take the sun " through this thing ; I should
think I might see that vessel through it. I had hardly got it
to my eye when some one touched me on the shoulder and
said, deprecatingly :
" I'll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there's any
THE OLD PIRATE.
thing you'd like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon
tell you as not — but I don't like to trust any body with
that instrument. If you want any figuring done — Aye-
aye, Sir!"
He was gone, to answer a call from the other side. I
sought the deck-sweep :
" Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sancti
monious countenance?"
"It's Capt. Jones, Sir— the chief mate."
TRANSGRESSING THE LAWS. 37
" Well. This goes clear away ahead of any thing I ever
heard of before. Do you — now I ask you as a man and a
brother — do you think I could venture to throw a rock here
in any given direction without hitting a captain of this ship ?"
" Well, Sir, I don't know — I think likely you'd fetch the
captain of the watch, may be, because he's a-standing right
yonder in the way."
I went below — meditating, and a little down-hearted. I
thought, if five cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five cap
tains do with a pleasure excursion.
OHAPTEE IV.
w
"E plowed along bravely for a week or more, and with
out any conflict of jurisdiction among the captains
worth mentioning. The passengers soon learned to accommo
date themselves to their new circumstances, and life in the
ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the
routine of a barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it
was not entirely so by any means — but there was a good
deal of sameness about it. As is always the fashion at sea, the
passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms — a sign that
they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no
longer half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the
South, and the Mississippi Yalley, it was " seven bells ;" eight,
twelve and four o'clock were " eight bells ;" the captain did
not take the longitude at nine o'clock, but at " two bells."
They spoke glibly of the " after cabin," the " for'rard cabin,"
" port and starboard " and the " fo'castle."
At seven bells the first gong rang ; at eight there was break
fast, for such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all
the well people walked arm-in-arm up and down the long
promenade deck, enjoying the fine summer mornings, and the
seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves up in the
lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and
looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and
from luncheon until dinner at six in the evening, the employ
ments and amusements were various. Some reading was
done ; and much smoking and sewing, though not by the same
parties ; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked after
PILGRIM LIFE AT SEA. 39
and wondered at ; strange ships had to be scrutinized through
opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them ;
and more than that, every body took a personal interest in see
ing that the flag was run up and politely dipped three times in
response to the salutes of those strangers; in the smoking-
room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre,
draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully
harmless game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard"-
for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle — we had what was
called " horse-billiards." Horse-billiards is a fine game. It
affords good, active exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement.
It is a mixture of " hop-scotch " and shuffle-board played with a
crutch. A large hop-scotch diagram is marked out on the deck
with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off
three or four steps, with some broad wooden disks before you on
the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous thrust of
a long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not count
any thing. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7 ; in 5, it
counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a
time. That game would be very simple, played on a sta
tionary floor, but with us, to play it well required science.
We had to allow for the reeling of the ship to the right or the
left. Yery often one made calculations for a heel to the right
and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was that
that disk missed the whole hop-scotch plan a yard or two, and
then there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.
When it rained, the passengers had to stay in the house, of
course — or at least the cabins — and amuse themselves with
games, reading, looking out of the windows at the very famil
iar billows, and talking gossip.
By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over ; an
hour's promenade on the upper deck followed ; then the gong
sounded and a large majority of the party repaired to the after
cabin (upper) a handsome saloon fifty or sixty feet long, for
prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the " Syna
gogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from
the "Plymouth Collection," and a short prayer, and seldom
40 THE
occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accom
panied by parlor organ music when the sea was smooth enough
to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without being
lashed to his chair.
After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of
a writing-school. The like of that picture was never seen in
a ship before. Behind the long dining-tables on either side of
the saloon, and scattered from one end to the other of the latter,
some twenty or thirty gentlemen and ladies sat them down
under the swaying lamps, and for two or three hours wrote
diligently in their journals. Alas ! that journals so volumi
nously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclu
sion as most of them did ! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim
of all that host but can show a hundred fair pages of journal
concerning the first twenty days' voyaging in the Quaker City ;
and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can show
twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand
miles of voyaging ! At certain periods it becomes the dearest
ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances
in a book ; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm
that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the
veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he
only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those
rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion
to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination, may hope
to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of
a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.
One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow
with a head full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a
wonder to look upon in the way of length, and straightness,
and slimness, used to report progress every morning in the
most glowing and spirited way, and say :
" Oh, I'm coming along bully !" (he was a little given to
slang, in his happier moods,) " I wrote ten pages in my journal
last night — and you know I wrote nine the night before, and
twelve the night before that. Why it's only fun !"
" What do you find to put in it, Jack f '
JACK'S "JOURNAL." 41
" Oh, every thing. Latitude and longitude, noon every day ;
and how many miles we made last twenty-four hours ; and all
the domino-games I beat, and horse-billiards ; and whales and
sharks and porpoises ; and the text of the sermon, Sundays ;
(because that'll tell at home, you know,) and the ships we sa
luted and what nation they were ; and which way the wind
was, and whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we
carried, though we don't ever carry any, principally, going
against a head wind always — wonder what is the reason of
that ? — and how many lies Moult has told — Oh, every thing !
I've got every thing down. My father told me to keep that
journal. Father wouldn't take a thousand dollars for it when
I get it done."
" No, Jack ; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars —
when you get it done."
u Do you ? — no, but do you think it will, though ?"
" Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dol
lars — when you get it done. May be, more."
" Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a
journal."
But it shortly became a most lamentable " slouch of a jour
nal." One night in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sight
seeing, I said :
" Now I'll go and stroll around the cafe's awhile, Jack, and
give you a chance to write up your journal, old fellow."
His countenance lost its fire. He said :
" Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that
journal any more. It is awful tedious. Do you know — I
reckon I'm as much as four thousand pages behind hand. I
haven't got any France in it at all. First I thought I'd leave
France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't do, would it ?
The governor would say, ' Hello, here — didn't see any thing in
France rC That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought
I'd copy France out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the
for'rard cabin who's writing a book, but there's more than three
hundred pages of it. Oh, /don't think a journal's any use —
do you ? They're only a bother, ain't they ?"
42
THE Q. C. CLUB.
u Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a
journal properly kept, is worth a thousand dollars, — when
you've got it done."
"A thousand! — well I should think so. /wouldn't finish
it for a million."
His experience was only the experience of the majority of
DANCING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
that industrious night-school in the cabin. If you wish to
inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young
person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.
A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excur
sionists amused and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the
passengers, wrhich met in the writing-school after prayers and
DANCING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 43
read aloud about the countries we were approaching, and dis
cussed the information so obtained.
Several times the photographer of the expedition brought
out his transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic
lantern exhibition. His views were nearly all of foreign
scenes, but there were one or two home pictures among them.
He advertised that he would " open his performance in the
after cabin at ' two bells,' (9, p. m.,) and show the passengers
where they shall eventually arrive " — which was all very well,
but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon
the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery !
On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck,
under the awnings, and made something of a ball-room display
of brilliancy by hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the
stanchions. Our music consisted of the well-mixed strains
of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt to catch
its breath where it ought to come out strong ; a clarinet which
was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather melancholy
on the low ones ; and a disreputable accordion that had a leak
somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked — a more ele
gant term does not occur to me just now. However, the
dancing was infinitely worse than the music. When the ship
rolled to starboard the whole platoon of dancers came charging
down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass at the rail ;
and when it rolled to port, they went floundering down to
port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun
around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then
went skurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go over
board. The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker
City, had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw
before, and was as full of interest to the spectator as it was
full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the partici
pant. "We gave up dancing, finally.
We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary, with toasts,
speeches, a poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial.
No ship ever went to sea that hadn't a mock trial on board.
The purser was accused of stealing an overcoat from state-room
44 THE MOCK TRIAL.
No. 10. A judge was appointed ; also clerks, a crier of the
court, constables, sheriffs ; counsel for the State and for the
defendant ; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled
after much challenging. The witnesses were stupid, and un
reliable and contradictory, as witnesses always are. The
counsel were eloquent, argumentative and vindictively abusive
of each other, as was characteristic and proper. The case was
HOCK TRIAL.
at last submitted, and duly finished by the judge with an
absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.
The acting of charades was tried, on several evenings, by
the young gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the
most distinguished success of all the amusement experi
ments.
An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it
was a failure. There was no oratorical talent in the ship.
"We all enjoyed ourselves — I ttiink I can safely say that, but
PILGRIM SOLEMNITY. 45
it was in a rather quiet way. "We very, very seldom played
the piano ; we played the flute and the clarinet together, and
made good music, too, what there was of it, but we always
played the same old tune ; it was a very pretty tune — how well
I remember it — I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We
never played either the melodeon or the organ, except at devo
tions — but I am too fast : young Albert did know part of a
tune — something about " O Something-Or-Other How Sweet
it is to Know that he's his What's-his-Name," (I do not re
member the exact title of it, but it was very plaintive, and full of
sentiment ;) Albert played that pretty much all the time, until
we contracted with him to restrain himself. But nobody ever
sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational
singing at church and prayers was not of a superior order of
architecture. I put up with it as long as I could, and then joined
in and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George
to join in too, and that made a failure of it ; because George's
voice was just " turning," and when he was singing a dismal
sort of base, it was apt to fly off the handle and startle every
body with a most discordant cackle on the upper notes. George
didn't know the tunes, either, which was also a drawback to
his performances. I said :
" Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotis
tical. It will provoke remark. Just stick to ' Coronation,'
like the others. It is a good tune — you can't improve it any,
just off-hand, in this way."
" Why I'm not trying to improve it — and I am singing like
the others — just as it is in the notes."
And he honestly thought he was, too ; and so he had no one
to blame but himself when his voice caught on the centre occa
sionally, and gave him the lockjaw.
There were those among the unregenerated who attributed
the unceasing head- winds to our distressing choir-music. There
were those who said openly that it was taking chances enough
to have such ghastly music going on, even when it was at its
best ; and that to exaggerate the crime by letting George help,
was simply flying in the face of Providence. These said that
46 GRUMBLERS.
the choir would keep tip their lacerating attempts at melody
until they would bring down a storm some day that would sink
the ship.
There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive
officer said the Pilgrims had no charity :
"There they are, down there every night at eight bells,
praying for fair winds — when they know as well as I do that
this is the only ship going east this time of the year, but there's
a thousand coming west — what's a fair wind for us is a head
wind to them — the Almighty's blowing a fair wind for a thou
sand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear around
so as to accommodate one, — and she a steamship at that ! It
ain't good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity,
it ain't common human charity. Avast with such nonsense !"
CHAPTEE Y.
TAKING it " by and large," as the sailors say, we had a
pleasant ten days' run from New York to the Azores
islands — not a fast run, for the distance is only twenty-four
hundred miles — but a right pleasant one, in the main. True,
we had head-winds all the time, and several stormy experi
ences which sent fifty per cent, of the passengers to bed, sick,
and made the ship look dismal and deserted — stormy experi
ences that all will remember who weathered them on the
tumbling deck, and caught the vast sheets of spray that
every now and then sprang high in air from the weather
bow and swept the ship like a thunder-shower; but for the
most part we had balmy summer weather, and nights that
were even finer than the days. We had the phenomenon
of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at
the same hour every night. The reason of this singular con
duct on the part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it
did afterward when we reflected that we were gaining about
twenty minutes every day, because we were going east so fast
—we gained just about enough every day to keep along with
the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had
left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same
place, and remained always the same.
Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West, and is on
his first voyage, was a good deal worried by the constantly
changing " ship-time." He was proud of his new watch at
first, and used to drag it out promptly when eight bells struck
at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he were losing
48 BLUCHER IN TROUBLE.
confidence in it. Seven days out from 'New York he came on
deck, and said with great decision :
" This thing's a swindle !"
"What's a swindle?"
" Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois — gave $150
for her — and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is
good on shore, but somehow she don't keep up her lick here
on the water — gets seasick, may be. She skips ; she runs along
regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all of a sudden,
she lets down. I've set that old regulator up faster and faster,
till I've shoved it clear around, but it don't do any good ; she
just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a
way that's astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells al
ways gets in about ten minutes ahead of her any way. I don't
know what to do with her now. She's doing all she can-
she's going her best gait, but it won't save her. Now, don't
you know, there ain't a watch in the ship that's making better
time than she is : but what does it signify ? When you hear
them eight bells you'll find her just about ten mimites short of
her score, sure."
The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this
fellow was trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up
to her. But, as he had said, he had pushed the regulator up
as far as it would go, and the watch was " on its best gait,"
and so nothing was left him but to fold his hands and see the
ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he ex
plained to him the mystery of " ship-time," and set his troubled
mind at rest. This young man asked a great many questions
about seasickness before we left, and wanted to know what its
characteristics were, and how he was to tell when he had it
He found out.
We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course,
and by and by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were
added to the regular list of sea wonders. Some of them were
white and some of a brilliant carmine color. The nautilus is
nothing but a transparent web of jelly, that spreads itself to
catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot or two.
"LAND, HO!" 49
long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an
accomplished sailor, and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its
sail when a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and
furls it entirely and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily
it keeps its sail wet and in good sailing order by turning over
and dipping it in the water for a moment. Seamen say the
nautilus is only found in these waters between the 35th and
45th parallels of latitude.
"LAND, no!
At three o'clock on the morning of the 21st of June, we
were awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in
sight. I said I did not take any interest in islands at three
o'clock in the morning. But another persecutor came, and
then another and another, and finally believing that the general
enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in peace, I got up
and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half o'clock now,
and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled
about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all
were wrapped in wintry costumes, and looking sleepy and un
happy in the pitiless gale and the drenching spray.
4
50 "FLORES. — FAYAL!"
Tlie island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain
of mud standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as
we bore down upon it, the sun came out and made it a beau
tiful picture — a mass of green farms and meadows that swelled
up to a height of fifteen hundred feet, and mingled its upper
outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp, steep
ridges, and cloven with narrow canons, and here and there on
the heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic bat
tlements and castles ; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts
of sunlight, that painted summit, and slope, and glen, with
bands of fire, and left belts of sombre shade between. It was
the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land !
We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from
shore, and all the opera-glasses in the ship were called into
requisition to settle disputes as to whether mossy spots on the
uplands were groves of trees or groves of weeds, or whether
the white villages down by the sea were really villages or only
the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally, we stood to
sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became
a dome of mud again, and sank down among the mists and
disappeared. But to many a seasick passenger it was good to
see the green hills again, and all were more cheerful after this
episode than any body could have expected them to be, con
sidering how sinfully early they had gotten up.
But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a
storm came up about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel
that common sense dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we
steered for the nearest island of the group — Fayal, (the people
there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the accent on the first
syllable.) We anchored in the open roadstead of Horta, half
a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten
thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a
sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier
or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheatre of
hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and
carefully cultivated clear to their summits — not a foot of soil
left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square
51
inclosures by stone walls, whose duty it is to protect the grow
ing products from the destructive gales that blow there. These
hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava walls,
make the hills look like vast checker-boards.
The islands belong to Portugal, and every thing in Fayal has
Portuguese characteristics about it. But more of that anon.
A swarm of swarthy, noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gestic
ulating Portuguese boatmen, with brass rings in their ears, and
fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship's sides, and various par
ties of us contracted with them to take us ashore at so much a
head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls
of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve and thirty-two
pounders, which Horta considered a most formidable insti
tution, but if we were ever to get after it with one of our tur-
reted monitors, they would have to move it out in the country
if they wanted it where they could go and find it again when
they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one — men
and women, and boys and girls, all ragged, and barefoot, un
combed and unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession,
beggars. They trooped after us, and never more, while we
tarried in Fayal, did we get rid of them. We walked up the
middle of the principal street, and these vermin surrounded us
on all sides, and glared upon us ; and every moment excited
couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back,
just as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on
his advertising trip from street to street. It was very flattering
to me to be part of the material for such a sensation. Here
and there in the doorways we saw women, with fashionable
Portuguese hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth,
attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugli
ness. It stands up high, and spreads far abroad, and is unfath-
omably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is
hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from
his tin shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of
trimming about this monstrous capote, as they call it — it is just
a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go
within eight points of the wind with one of them on ; she has
52
A DISASTROUS BANQUET.
CAPOTE.
to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of tlie
capote is the same in all the islands, and will remain so for the
next ten thousand years, but each isl
and shapes its capotes just enough
differently from the others to enable
an observer to tell at a glance what
particular island a lady hails from.
The Portuguese pennies or reis (pro
nounced rays) are prodigious. It takes
one thousand reis to make a dollar,
and all financial estimates are made
in reis. We did not know this until
after we had found it out through
Blucher. Blucher said he was so
happy and so grateful to be on solid
land once more, that he wanted to
give a feast — said he had heard it
was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand ban
quet. He invited nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner
at the principal hotel. In the midst of the jollity produced
by good cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the landlord
presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and his countenance
fell. He took another look to assure himself that his senses
had not deceived him, and then read the items aloud, in a fal
tering voice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to ashes :
" 'Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis !' Euin and deso
lation !"
"< Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my
sainted mother !"
" ' Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis !' Be
with us all !"
" i TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED EEIS !'
The suffering Moses ! — there ain't money enough in the ship
to pay that bill ! Go — leave me to my misery, boys, I am a
ruined community."
I think it was the blankest looking party I ever saw. No
body could say a word. It was as if every soul had been
A DISASTROUS BANQUET.
53
stricken dumb. Wine-glasses descended slowly to the table,
their contents untasted. Cigars dropped unnoticed from nerve
less fingers. Each man sought his neighbor's eye, but found
in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At last the fearful
silence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve settled
"RUIN AND DESOLATION 1"
upon Blucher's countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and
said:
" Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never,
never stand it. Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and
it's all you'll get — I'll swim in blood, before I'll pay a cent
more."
Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell — at least we thought
so ; he was confused at any rate, notwithstanding he had not
understood a word that had been said. He glanced from the
54: THE HAPPY RESULT.
little pile of gold pieces to Bluclier several times, and then
Went out. He must have visited an American, for, when he
returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language
that a Christian could understand — thus :
10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or $6.00
25 cigars, 2.500 reis, or 2.50
11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or 13.20
Total 21,700 reis, or $21.70
Happiness reigned once more in Blucher's dinner party.
More refreshments were ordered.
CHAPTEE VI.
" THINK the Azores must be very little known in America.
-*- Out of our whole ship's company there was not a solitary
individual who knew any thing whatever about them. Some
of the party, well read concerning most other lands, had no
other information about the Azores than that they were a group
of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic, something
more than half way between New York and Gibraltar. That
was all. These considerations move me to put in a paragraph
of dry facts just here.
The community is eminently Portuguese— that is to say, it
is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil gov
ernor, appointed by the King of Portugal ; and also a military
governor, who can assume supreme control and suspend the
civil government at his pleasure. The islands contain a popu
lation of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese. Every
thing is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred
years old when Columbus discovered America. The principal
crop is corn, and they raise it and grind it just as their great-
great-great-grandfathers did. They plow with a board slightly
shod with iron ; their trifling little harrows are drawn by men
and women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a
day, and there is one assistant superintendent to feed the mill
and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from
going to sleep. When the wind changes they hitch on some
donkeys, and actually turn the whole upper half of the mill
around until the sails are in proper position, instead of fixing
the concern so that the sails could be moved instead of the
56 A CURIOUS PEOPLE.
mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion
prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a wheel
barrow in the land — they carry every thing on their heads, or
on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid
blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There
is not a modern plow in the islands, or a threshing-machine.
All attempts to introduce them have failed. The good Cath
olic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him
from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did
before him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or
ice, and I saw no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and
the men, women and children of a family, all eat and sleep in
the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and
are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and
are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for
their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are
than the donkeys they eat and sleep with. The only well-
dressed Portuguese in the camp are the half a dozen well-to-do
families, the Jesuit priests and the soldiers of the little garri
son. The wages 'of a laborer are twenty to twenty-four cents
a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as much.
They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this
makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in
the islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported.
But a disease killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since
that time no wine has been made. The islands being wholly
of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very rich. Nearly
every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three
crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is
exported save a few oranges — chiefly to England. Nobody
comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing unknown
in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion equally unknown. A
Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our civil war
was over ? because, he said, somebody had told him it was — or
at least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him some
thing like that ! And when a passenger gave an officer of the
garrison copies of the Tribune, the Herald, and Times, he was
THE CATHEDKAL. 57
surprised to find later news in them from Lisbon than lie had
just received by the little monthly steamer. He was told that
it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay a
cable ten years ago, but it had been in his mind, somehow,
that they hadn't succeeded !
It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flour
ishes. AVe visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred
years old, and found in it a piece of the veritable cross upon
which our Saviour was crucified. It was polished and hard,
and in as excellent a state of preservation as if the dread
tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen
centuries ago. But these confiding people believe in that
piece of wood unhesitatingly.
In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid
silver — at least they call it so, and I think myself it would go
a couple of hundred to the ton (to speak after the fashion of
the silver miners,) and before it is kept forever burning a
small lamp. A devout lady who died, left money and con
tracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and
also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always,
day and night. She did all this before she died, you under
stand. It is a very small lamp, and a very dim one, and it
could not work her much damage, I think, if it went out
altogether.
The great altar of the cathedral, and also three or four
minor ones, are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and ginger
bread. And they have a sw^arm of rusty, dusty, battered
apostles standing around the filagree work, some on one leg and
some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and
some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not
enough nose left to blow — all of them crippled and discour
aged, and fitter subjects for the hospital than the cathedral.
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over
with figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought, and
dressed in the fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The
design was a history of something or somebody, but none of
us were learned enough to read the story. The old father,
58 FANTASTIC PILGRIMIZING.
reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told
us if he could have risen. But he didn't.
As we came down through the town, we encountered a
squad of little donkeys ready saddled for use. The saddles
were peculiar, to say the least. They consisted of a sort of
saw-buck, with a small mattress on it, and this furniture cov
ered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups, but
really such supports were not needed — to use such a saddle
was the next thing to riding a dinner table — there was ample
support clear out to one's knee joints. A pack of ragged Por
tuguese muleteers crowded around us, offering their beasts at
half a dollar an hour — more rascality to the stranger, for the
market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us mounted
the ungainly affairs, and submitted to the indignity of making
a ridiculous spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets
of a town of 10,000 inhabitants.
We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a
stampede, and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits.
No spurs were necessary. There was a muleteer to every
donkey and a dozen volunteers beside, and they banged the
donkeys with their goad-sticks, and pricked them with their
spikes, and shouted something that sounded like " Sekki-yah /"
and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam
itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they
were always up to time — they can outrun and outlast a
donkey. Altogether ours was a lively and a picturesque pro
cession, and drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever
we went.
Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast
scampered zigzag across the road and the others ran into him ;
he scraped Blucher against carts and the corners of houses ; the
road was fenced in with high stone walls, and the donkey gave
him a polishing first on one side and then on the other, but
never once took the middle ; he finally came to the house he
was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off
at the doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the
muleteer, " Now, that's enough, you know ; you go slow here-
THE CATASTROPHE.
59
after." But the fellow knew no English and did not under
stand, so he simply said, " Sekki-yah I " and the donkey was
off again like a shot. lie turned a corner suddenly, and
Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every mule
stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up
" SEKKI-YAH I"
in a heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys
is of little more consequence than rolling off a sofa. The
donkeys all stood still after the catastrophe, and waited for
their dismembered saddles to be patched up and put on by the
noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry, and wanted to
swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so
60 ORIGIN OF THE RUSS PAVEMENT.
also, and let off a series of brays that drowned all other
sounds.
It was fun, skurrying around the breezy hills and through
the beautiful canons. There was that rare thing, novelty,
about it ; it was a fresh, new, exhilarating sensation, this
donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn and threadbare
home pleasures.
The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here
was an island with only a handful of people in it — 25,000 —
and yet such fine roads do not exist in the United States out
side of Central Park. Every where you go, in any direction,
you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just
sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters
neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved
ones like Broadway. They talk much of the Russ pavement
in New York, and call it a new invention — yet here they
have been using it in this remote little isle of the sea for two
hundred years ! Every street in Horta is handsomely paved
with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and true
as a floor — not marred by holes like Broadway. And every
road is fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, wrhich will last a
thousand years in this land where frost is unknown. They are
very thick, and are often plastered and whitewashed, and
capped with projecting slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens
above hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast their
bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of the
walls, and make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch
across these narrow roadways sometimes, and so shut out the
sun that you seem to be riding through a tunnel. The pave
ments, the roads, and the bridges are all government work.
The bridges are of a single span — a single arch — of cut
stone, without a support, and paved on top with flags of lava
and ornamental pebble work. Every where are walls, walls,
walls, — and all of them tasteful and handsome — and eter
nally substantial ; and every where are those marvelous pave
ments, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever
roads and streets, and the outsides of houses, were perfectly
SQUARING ACCOUNTS. 61
free from any sign or semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or
uncleanliness of any kind, it is Ilorta, it is Fayal. The lower
classes of the people, in their persons and their domicils, are
not clean — but there it stops — the town and the island are
miracles of cleanliness.
We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion,
and the irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through
the main street, goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting
" Sekhi-yah" and singing " John Brown's Body " in ruinous
English.
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the
snouting and jawing, and swearing and quarreling among the
muleteers and with us, was nearly deafening. One fellow
would demand a dollar an hour for the use of his donkey ;
another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a
quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides
presented bills for showing us the way through the town and
its environs ; and every vagrant of them was more vociferous,
and more vehement, and more frantic in gesture than his
neighbor. We paid one guide, and paid for one muleteer to
each donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We
sailed along the shore of the Island of Pico, under a stately
green pyramid that rose up with one unbroken sweep from our
very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet, and thrust its summit
above the white clouds like an island adrift in a fog !
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc.
in these Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here
to write Patent-Office reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five
or six days out from the Azores.
CHAPTEE VII.
A WEEK of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea ; a
-£X_ week of seasickness and deserted cabins ; of lonely
quarter-decks drenched with spray — spray so ambitious that it
even coated the smoke-stacks thick with a white crust of salt
to their very 'tops; a week of shivering in the shelter of the
life-boats and deck-houses by day, and blowing suffocating
"clouds" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the
smoking room at night.
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all.
There was no thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the
ship, the keen whistling of the gale through the cordage, and
the rush of the seething waters. But the vessel climbed aloft
as if she would climb to heaven — then paused an instant that
.seemed a century, and plunged headlong down again, as from
a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain.
The blackness of darkness was every where. At long inter
vals a flash of lightning clove it with a quivering line of fire,
that revealed a heaving world of water where was nothing
before, kindled the dusky cordage to glittering silver, and lit
up the faces of the men with a ghastly lustre !
Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the
night-winds and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not
live through the night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand
out in the midst of the wild tempest and see the peril that
threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral cabins, under
the dim lamps and imagine the horrors that were abroad on
the ocean. And once out — once where they could see the
SPAIN AND AFRICA ON EXHIBITION. 63
ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm — once where
they could hear the shriek of the winds, and face the driving
spray and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings
disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce fascination they could
not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night — and a very,
very long one.
Every body was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock
this lovely morning of the 30th of June with the glad news
that land was in sight ! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to
see all the ship's family abroad once more, albeit the happiness
that sat upon every countenance could only partly conceal the
ravages which that long siege of storms had wrought there.
But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks flushed
again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life
from the quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning.
Yea, and from a still more potent influence : the worn casta
ways were to see the blessed land again ! — and to see it was to
bring back that mother-land that was in all their thoughts.
"Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gib
raltar, the tall yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right,
with their bases veiled in a blue haze and their summits
swathed in clouds — the same being according to Scripture,
which says that " clouds and darkness are over the land." The
words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I be
lieve. On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain.
The Strait is only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part.
At short intervals, along the Spanish shore, were quaint-
looking old stone towers — Moorish, we thought — but learned
better afterwards. In former times the Morocco rascals used
to coast along the Spanish Main in their boats till a safe oppor
tunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in and capture a
Spanish village, and carry off all the pretty women they could
find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The
Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them
to keep a sharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators.
The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes
weary of the changeless sea, and bye and bye the ship's com-
GREETING A MAJESTIC STRANGER.
pany grew wonderfully cheerful. But while we stood admir
ing the cloud-capped peaks and the lowlands robed in misty
gloom, a finer picture burst upon us and chained every eye
like a magnet — a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till
she was one towering mass
of bellying sail! She came
speeding over the sea like a
great bird. Africa and Spain
were forgotten. All homage
was for the beautiful stranger.
While every body gazed, she
swept superbly by and flung
the Stars and Stripes to the
breeze ! Quicker than thought,
hats and handkerchiefs flashed
in the air, and a cheer went
up ! She was beautiful be
fore — she was radiant now.
Many a one on our decks
knew then for the first time
how tame a sight his coun
try's flag is at home compared
to what it is in a foreign land.
To see it is to see a vision
of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir
a very river of sluggish blood !
We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and
already the African one, " Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain
with summit streaked with granite ledges, was in sight. The
other, the great Rock of Gibraltar, was yet to come. The
ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navi
gation and the end of the world. The information the
ancients didn't have was very voluminous. Even the prophets
wrote book after book and epistle after epistle, yet never once
hinted at the existence of a great continent on our side of the
water ; yet they must have known it was there, I should think.
In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock,
BEAUTIFUL STRANGER.
THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR. 65
standing seemingly in the centre of the wide strait and appar
ently washed on all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into
view, and we needed no tedious traveled parrot to tell us it
was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like that in one
kingdom.
The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I
should say, by 1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a
mile wide at its base. One side and one end of it come about
as straight up out of the sea as the side of a house, the other
end is irregular and the other side is a steep slant which an
army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of this
slant is the walled town of Gibraltar — or rather the town
occupies part of the slant. Evrery where — on hillside, in the
precipice, by the sea, on the heights, — every where you choose
to look, Gibraltar is clad with masonry and bristling with
guns. It makes a striking and lively picture, from whatsoever
point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into the sea on
the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive
of a " gob " of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred
yards of this flat ground at its base belongs to the English,
and then, extending across the strip from the Atlantic to the
Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of a mile, comes the
" Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards wide,
which is free to both parties.
"Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question
wras bandied about the ship day and night from Fayal to
Gibraltar, and I thought I never could get so tired of hearing
any one combination of words again, or more tired of answer
ing, " I don't know." At the last moment six or seven had
sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go,
and did go, and I felt a sense of relief at once — it was forever
too late, now, and I could make up my mind at my leisure,
not to go. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind ; it
takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.
But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no
sooner gotten rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar
guides started another — a tiresome repetition of a legend that
5
66 TIRESOME REPETITION.
had nothing very astonishing about it, even in the first place :
" That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair ; it is
because one of the Queens of Spain placed her chair there
when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar,
and said she would never move from the spot till the English
flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't
been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day,
she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."
We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets
and entered the subterranean galleries the English have blasted
out in the rock. These galleries are like spacious railway
tunnels, and at short intervals in them great guns frown out
upon sea and town through port-holes five or six hundred feet
above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean
work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor.
The gallery guns command the peninsula and the harbors of
both oceans, but they might as well not be there, I should
think, for an army could hardly climb the perpendicular wall
of the rock any how. Those lofty port-holes afford superb
views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag
was hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was
huge cannon and whose windows were port-holes, a glimpse
was caught of a hill not far away, and a soldier said :
" That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair ; it is
because a queen of Spain placed her chair there, once, when
the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and
said she would never move from the spot till the English
flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't
been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours, one day,
she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."
On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good
while, and no doubt the mules were tired. They had a right
to be. The military road was good, but rather steep, and
there was a good deal of it. The view from the narrow ledge
was magnificent ; from it vessels seeming like the tiniest little
toy-boats, were turned into noble ships by the telescopes ; and
other vessels that were fifty miles away, and even sixty, they
THE QUEEN'S CHAIR.
67
said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distin
guished through those same telescopes. Below, on one side,
we looked down upon an endless mass of batteries, and on the
other straight down to the sea.
While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and
cooling my baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious
guide belonging to another party came up and said :
"Senor, that high lull yonder is called the Queen's Chair" —
"Sir, I am a helpless orphan
in a foreign land. Have pity
on me. Don't — now don't inflict
that most III-FERNAL old legend on me any more to-day !"
There — I had used strong language, after promising I would
never do so again ; but the provocation was more than human
nature could bear. If you had been bored so, when you had
the noble panorama of Spain and Africa and the blue Medi-
68 CU-RIOSITIES OF THE SECRET CAVERNS.
terranean, spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze,
and enjoy, and surfeit yourself with its beauty in silence,
you might have even burst into stronger language than I
did.
Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them
of nearly four years duration (it failed,) and the English only
captured it by stratagem. The wonder is that any body should
ever dream of trying so impossible a project as the taking it
by assault — and yet it has been tried more than once.
The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a
stanch old castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the
middle of the town, with moss-grown battlements and sides
well scarred by shots fired in battles and sieges that are for
gotten now. A secret chamber, in the rock behind it, was
discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of ex
quisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion
that antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed
to be Roman. Roman armor and Roman relics, of various
kinds, have been found in a cave in the sea extremity of Gib
raltar ; history says Rome held this part of the country about
the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the state
ment.
In that cave, also, are found human bones, crusted with a
very thick, stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say
that those men not only lived before the flood, but as much
as ten thousand years before it. It may be true — it looks
reasonable enough — but as long as those parties can't vote any
more, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this
cave, likewise, are found skeletons and fossils of animals that
exist in every part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition
have never existed in any portion of Spain save this lone peak
of Gibraltar ! So the theory is that the channel between Gib
raltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the low, neutral
neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was
once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being
over at Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps — there is plenty there,)
got closed out when the great change occurred. The hills in
ECCENTRIC SHIPMATES. 69
Africa, across the channel, are full of apes, and there are
now, and always have been, apes on the rock of Gibraltar
— but not elsewhere in Spain ! The subject is an interesting
one.
There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000
men, and so uniforms of flaming red are plenty ; and red and
blue, and undress costumes of snowy white, and also the queer
uniform of the bare-kneed Highlander ; and one sees soft-eyed
Spanish girls from San Roque, and veiled Moorish beauties (I
suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and turbaned, sashed
and trowsered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-robed,
bare-legged, ragged Mohammedan vagabonds from Tetouan
and Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as
virgin ink — and Jews from all around, in gaberdine, skull-cap
and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theatres, and just
as they were three thousand years ago, no doubt. You can
easily understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims suggest
that expression, because they march in a straggling procession
through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of
complacency and independence about them,) like ours, made
up from fifteen or sixteen States of the Union, found enough
to stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion to-day.
Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or
two people among us who are sometimes an annoyance.
However, I do not count the Oracle in that list. I will explain
that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who eats for four and
looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have
any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he
can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance
knows the meaning of any long word he uses, or ever gets it
in the right place : yet he will serenely venture an opinion on
the most abstruse subject, and back it up complacently with
quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when
cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has
been there all the time, and come back at you with your own
spoken arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and
play them in your very teeth as original with himself. He
70
ECCENTRIC SHIPMATES.
reads a chapter in the guide-books, mixes the facts all up,
with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole
mess on somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his
brain for years, and which he gathered in college from erudite
authors who are dead, now, and out of print. This morning
at breakfast he pointed out of the window, and said :
" Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast ?
— It's one of them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say — and
there's the ultimate one alongside of it."
^ The ultimate one — that is a good word — but the Pillars
are not both on the same side of the strait." (I saw he had
been deceived by a carelessly written sentence in the Guide
Book.)
" Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors
states it that
wTay
and some
states it differ
ent. Old Gib
bons don't say
nothing about it,
— just shirks it
complete — Gib
bons always
done that when
he got stuck —
but there is Eo-
lampton, what
does he say ?
Why, he says
that they was both on the same side, and Trinculian, and
Sobaster, and Syraccus, and Langomarganbl—
" Oh, that will do — that's enough. If you have got your
hand in for inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing
more to say — let them be on the same side."
We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can
tolerate the Oracle very easily; but we have a poet and a
good-natured enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress
THE ORACLE.
ECCENTRIC SHIPMATES.
71
the company. The one gives copies of liis verses to Consuls,
commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch, — to any body, in
fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly
meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwith
standing when he wrote an " Ode to the Ocean in a Storm "
in one half-hour, and an "Apostrophe to the Rooster in the
Waist of the Ship " in the next, the transition was considered
to be rather abrupt ; but when he sends an invoice of rhymes
to the Governor of Fayal and another to the Commander-in-
chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar, with the compliments
of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.
The other personage I have mentioned is young and green,
and not bright, not learned and not wise. He will be, though,
some day, if he recollects the answers
to all his questions. He is known
about the ship as the " Interrogation
Point," and this by constant use has
become shortened to "Interrogation."
He has distinguished himself twice al
ready. In Fayal they pointed out a
hill and told him it was eight hun
dred feet high and eleven hundred
feet long. And they told him there
was a tunnel two thousand feet long
and one thousand feet high running
through the hill, from end to end.
He believed it. He repeated it to every body, discussed it,
and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a useful hint from
this remark which a thoughtful old pilgrim made :
" Well, yes, it is a little remarkable — singular tunnel alto
gether — stands up out of the top of the hill about two hundred
feet, and one end of it sticks out of the hill about nine hundred !"
Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers
and badgers them with braggadocio about America and the
wonders she can perform. He told one of them a couple of
our gunboats could come here and knock Gibraltar into the
Mediterranean Sea !
1 INTERROGATION POINT."
A PRIVATE FEOLIC IN AFRICA.
At this present moment, half a dozen of us are taking a
private pleasure excursion of our own devising. We form
rather more than half the list of white passengers on board a
small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish town of Tan
gier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutety certain
than that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do other
wise who speeds over these sparkling waters, and breathes the
soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care can not assail us
here. We are out of its jurisdiction.
We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of
Malabat, (a stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco,) without a
twinge of fear. The whole garrison
turned out under arms, and assumed /
a threatening attitude — yet still we
did not fear. The entire garrison marched and counter
marched, within the rampart, in full view — yet notwithstand
ing even this, we never flinched.
BEARDING THE MOOR IN HIS CASTLE. 73
I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired
the name of the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they
said it was Meliemet Ali Ben Sancorn. I said it would be a
good idea to get some more garrisons to help him ; but
they said no ; he had nothing to do but hold the place, and
he was competent to do that ; had done it two years already.
That was evidence which one could not well refute. There is
nothing like reputation.
Every now and then, my glove purchase in Gibraltar last
night intrudes itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon
and I had been up to the great square, listening to the music
of the fine military bands, and contemplating English and
Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and, at 9 o'clock, were
on our way to the theatre, when we met the General, the
Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of
the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa,
who had been to the Club House, to register their several
titles and impoverish the bill of fare ; and they told us to go
over to the little variety store, near the Hall of Justice, and
buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant, and very
moderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the
theatre in kid gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very
handsome young lady in the store offered me a pair of blue
gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would look
very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched me
tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it
did seem rather a comely member. I tried a glove 011 my
left, and blushed a little. Manifestly the size was too small
for me. But I felt gratified when she said :
" Oh, it is just right !" — yet I knew it was no such thing.
I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work.
She said :
" Ah ! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves — but
some gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on."
It was the last compliment I had expected. I only under
stand putting on the buckskin article perfectly. I made
another effort, and tore the glove from the base of the thumb
VANITY REBUKED.
into the palm of the hand — and tried to hide the rent. She
kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to
deserve them or die :
" Ah, you have had experience !" [A rip down the back
of the hand.] " They are just right for you — your hand is
very small — if they
tear you need not
pay for them." [A
rent across the
middle.] " I can
always tell when a
gentleman under
stands putting on
kid gloves. There
is a grace about it
that only comes
with long practice.
[The whole after
guard of the glove
" fetched away," as
the sailors say, the
fabric parted across the knuckles/ and nothing was left but a
melancholy ruin.]
I was too much flattered to make an exposure, and throw
the merchandise on the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, con
fused, but still happy ; but I hated the other boys for taking
such an absorbing interest in the proceedings. I wished they
were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean when I said cheer-
fully-
" This one does very well ; it fits elegantly. I like a glove
that fits. No, never mind, ma'am, never mind ; I'll put the
other on in the street. It is warm here."
It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I
paid the bill, and as I passed out with a fascinating bow, I
thought I detected a light in the woman's eye that was gently
ironical ; and when I looked back from the street, and she w^as
laughing all to herself about something, or other, I said to my-
EXTERTAIXING AN AXGEL.
IN THE EMPIRE OF MOROCCO. 75
self, with withering sarcasm, " Oh, certainly ; you know how
to put on kid gloves, don't you ? — a self-complacent ass, ready
to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that
chooses to take the trouble to do it !"
The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally, Dan said,
musingly :
" Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at
all ; but some do."
And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought,)
u Bat it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to
putting on kid gloves."
Dan solilopuized, after a pause :
" Ah, yes ; there is a grace about it that only comes with
long, very long practice."
" Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid
glove like he was dragging a cat out of an ash-hole by the
tail, he understands putting on kid gloves ; he's had ex —
" Boys, enough of a thing 's enough ! You think you are
very smart, I suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell
any of those old gossips in the ship about this thing, I'll never
forgive you for it ; that 's all."
They let me alone then, for the time being. We always let
each other alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a
joke. But they had bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw
all the purchases away together this morning. They were
coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with broad yellow
splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public exhibition.
We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take
her in. She did that for us.
Tangier ! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the
sea to carry us ashore on their backs from the small boats.
CHAPTEE VIII.
THIS is royal ! Let those who went up through Spain
make the best of it — these dominions of the Emperor of
Morocco suit our little party well enough. We have had
enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present. Tangier is the
spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we
have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people,
but always with things and people intermixed that we were
familiar with, before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a
deal of its force. We wanted something thoroughly and un
compromisingly foreign — foreign from top to bottom — foreign
from centre to circumference — foreign inside and outside and
all around — nothing any where about it to dilute its foreign-
ness — nothing to remind us of any other people or any other
land under the sun. And lo ! in Tangier we have found it.
Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in
pictures — and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We
can not any more. The pictures used to seem exaggerations
— they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But behold,
they were not wild enough — they were not fanciful enough—
they have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land
if ever there wras one ; and the true spirit of it can never be
found in any book save the Arabian lights. Here are no
white men visible, yet swarms of humanity are all about us.
Here is a packed and jammed city inclosed in a massive stone
wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the houses
nearly are one and two-story ; made of thick walls of stone ;
plastered outside ; square as a dry-goods box ; flat as a floor on
ORIENTAL WONDERS.
77
top ; no cornices ; whitewashed all over — a crowded city of
snowy tombs ! And the doors are arched with the peculiar
arch we see in Moorish pictures ; the floors are laid in vari
colored diamond-flags ; in tesselated many-colored porcelain
squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez ; in red tiles arid broad
bricks that time can not wear ; there is no furniture in the
VIEW OF A STREET IN TANGIER.
rooms (of Jewish dwellings) save divans — what there is in
Moorish ones no man may know ; within their sacred walls no
Christian dog can enter. And the streets are oriental — some
of them three feet wide, some six, but only two that are over
a dozen ; a man can blockade the most of them by extending
his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture ?
There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately
Moors, proud of a history that goes back to the night of time ;
and Jews, whose fathers fled hither centuries upon centuries
ago; and swarthy Eiflians from the mountains — born cut-
78 A FUNNY TOWN.
throats — and original, genuine negroes, as black as Moses ; and
howling dervishes, and a hundred breeds of Arabs — all sorts
and descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look
upon.
And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here
is a bronzed Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously em
broidered jacket, gold and crimson sash, of many folds,
wrapped round and round his waist, trowsers that only come
a little below his knee, and yet have twenty yards of stuff in
them, ornamented scimetar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow
slippers, and gun of preposterous length — a mere soldier ! — I
thought he was the Emperor at least. And here are aged
Moors with flowing white beards, and long white robes with
vast cowls ; and Bedouins with long, cowled, striped cloaks,
and negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven, except a
kinky scalp-lock back of the ear, or rather up on the after
corner of the skull, and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of
weird costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are
Moorish women who are enveloped from head to foot in coarse
white robes and whose sex can only be determined by the fact
that they only leave one eye visible, and never look at men of
their own race, or are looked at by them in public. Here are
five thousand Jews in blue gaberdines, sashes about their
waists, slippers upon their feet, little skull-caps upon the
backs of their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and
cut straight across the middle of it from side to side — the self
same fashion their Tangier ancestors have worn for I don't
know how many bewildering centuries. Their feet and ankles
are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked alike. They
all resemble each other so much that one could almost believe
they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty,
and do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last
degree comforting.
What a funny old town it is ! It seems like profanation to
laugh, and jest, and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid
its hoary relics. Only the stately phraseology and the meas
ured speech of the sons of the Prophet are suited to a vener-
A CRADLE OF ANTIQUITY. 79
able antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall that was
old when Columbus discovered America ; was old when Peter
the Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to
arm for the first Crusade ; was old when Charlemagne and his
paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants
and genii in the fabled days of the olden time ; was old when
Christ and his disciples walked the earth ; stood where it
stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal, and men
bought and sold in the streets of ancient Thebes !
The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors,
Romans, all have battled for Tangier — all have won it and
lost it. Here is a ragged, oriental-looking negro from some
desert place in interior Africa, filling his goat-skin with water
from a stained and battered fountain built by the Romans
twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge
built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who
had seen the infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms, have stood
upon it, may be.
Near it are the ruins of a dock-yard where Caesar repaired
his ships and loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain,
fifty years before the Christian era.
Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged
with the phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting
upon a spot where stood a monument which was seen and
described by Roman historians less than two thousand years
ago, whereon was inscribed :
ABE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE
BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH
ROBBER, JOSHUA."
Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many
leagues from here is a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled
thither after an unsuccessful revolt against King David, and
these their descendants are still under a ban and keep to them
selves.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand
years. And it was a town, though a queer one, when Her-
80 STOKES AND MERCHANTS.
cules, clad in his lion-skin, landed here, four thousand years
ago. In these streets he met Anitus, the king of the country,
and brained him with his club, "Vhich was the fashion among
gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called
Tingis, then,) lived in the rudest possible huts, and dressed in
skins and carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts
they were constantly obliged to war with. But they were a
gentlemanly race, and did no work. They lived on the natural
products of the land. Their king's country residence was at
the famous Garden of liesperides, seventy miles down the
coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples, (oranges,)
is gone now — no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede
that such a personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times,
and agree that he was an enterprising and energetic man, but
decline to believe him a good, bona fide god, because that
would be unconstitutional.
Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Her
cules, where that hero took refuge when he was vanquished
and driven out of the Tangier country. It is full of inscrip
tions in the dead languages, which fact makes me think Her
cules could not have traveled much, else he would not have
kept a journal.
Five days' journey from here — say two hundred miles — are
the ruins of an ancient city, of whose history there is neither
record nor tradition. And yet its arches, its columns, and its
statues, proclaim it to have been built by an enlightened
race.
The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an
ordinary shower-bath in a civilized land. The Mohammedan
merchant, tinman, shoemaker, or vendor of trifles, sits cross-
legged on the floor, and reaches after any article you may want
to buy. You can rent a whole block of these pigeon-holes for
fifty dollars a month. The market people crowd the market
place with their baskets of figs, dates, melons, apricots, etc.,
and among them file trains of laden asses, not much larger, if
any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is pic
turesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-
WE BECOME WEALTHY.
81
s
CHANGE FOR A NAPOLEON.
changers have their dens close at hand ; and all day long are
counting bronze coins and transferring them from one bushel
basket to another. They
don't coin much money
nowT-a-days, I think. I saw
none but what was dated
four or five hundred years
back, and was badly worn
and battered. These coins
are not very valuable.
Jack went out to get a
Napoleon changed, so as
"JJ to have money suited to
the general cheapness of
things, and came back and
said he had " swamped the
bank ; had bought eleven
quarts of coin, and the
head of the firm had gone
on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change." I
bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling myself.
I am not proud on account of having so much money, th6ugh.
I care nothing for -wealth.
The Moors have some small silver coins, and also some
silver slugs worth, a dollar each. The latter are exceedingly
scarce — so much so that when poor ragged Arabs see one they
beg to be allowed to kiss it.
They have also a small gold coin wrorth two dollars. And
that reminds me of something. When Morocco is in a state
of war, Arab couriers carry letters through the country, and
charge a liberal postage. Every now and then they fall into
the hands of marauding bands and get robbed. Therefore,
warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two dol
lars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little
gold pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it.
The stratagem was good while it was unsuspected, but after
that the marauders simply gave the sagacious United States
mail an emetic and sat down to wait.
6
82 CURIOUS REVENUE SYSTEM.
The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great
officers under him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no
regular system of taxation, but when the Emperor or the
Bashaw want money, they levy on some rich man, and he has
to furnish the cash or go to prison. Therefore, few men in
Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a luxury. Vanity
occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or later
the Emperor trumps up a charge against him — any sort of one
will do — and contiscates Ins property. Of course, there are
many rich men in the empire, but their money is buried, and
they dress in rags and counterfeit poverty. Every now and
then the Emperor imprisons a man who is suspected of the
crime of bein^ rich, and makes things so uncomfortable for
him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden his
money.
Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the pro
tection of the foreign consuls, and then they can flout their
riches in the Emperor's face with impunity.
CHAPTEE IX.
ABOUT the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon,
after landing here, came near finishing that heedless
Blucher. We had just mounted some mules and asses,
and started out under the guardianship of the stately,
the princely, the magnificent Hadji Mohammed Lamarty,
(may his tribe increase !) when we came upon a fine Moorish
mosque, with tall tower, rich with checker-work of many-
colored porcelain, and every part and portion of the edifice
adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and
Blucher started to ride into the open door-way. A startling
"Hi-hiP from our camp-followers, and a loud "Halt!" from
an English gentleman in the party checked the adventurer,
and then we were informed that so dire a profanation is it for
a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred threshold of a
Moorish mosque, that no amount of purification can ever
make it fit for the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher
succeeded in entering the place, he would no doubt have been
chased through the town and stoned ; and the time has been,
and not many years ago either, when a Christian would have
been most ruthlessly slaughtered, if captured in a mosque.
"We caught a glimpse of the handsome tesselated pavements
within, and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the
fountains ; but even that we took that glimpse was a thing not
relished by the Moorish bystanders.
Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got
out of order. The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that
it has been long since there was an artificer among them
84: MOORISH PUNISHMENTS FOR CRIME.
capable of curing so delicate a patient as a debilitated clock.
The great men of the city met in solemn conclave to consider
how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter
thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch
arose and said:
" Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a
Portuguee dog of a Christian clock-mender pollutes the city of
Tangier with his presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques
are builded, asses bear the stones and the cement, and cross
the sacred threshold. Now, therefore, send the Christian dog
on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to mend the
clock, and let him go as an ass !"
And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever
sees the inside of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his
humanity and go in his natural character. AVe visited the
jail, and found Moorish prisoners making mats and baskets.
(This thing of utilizing crime savors of civilization.) Murder
is punished with death. A short time ago, three murderers
were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are
not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this in
stance, they set up the poor criminals at long range, like so
many targets, and practiced on them — kept them hopping
about and dodging bullets for half an hour before thqy man
aged to drive the centre.
When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and
left leg, and nail them up in the market-place as a warning to
every body. Their surgery is not artistic. They slice around
the bone a little ; then break off the limb. Sometimes the
patient gets well ; but, as a general thing, he don't. How
ever, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always
brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without
a wince, without a tremor of any kind, without a groan ! No
amount of suffering can bring down the pride of a Moor, or
make him shame his dignity with a cry.
Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties
to it. There are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding
out, no courting in dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and recon-
THREE SUNDAYS IN A WEEK. 85
ciliations — no nothing that is proper to approaching matri
mony. The young man takes the girl his father selects for
him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees
her for the first time. If, after due acquaintance, she suits
him, he retains her ; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles
her back to her father ; if he finds her diseased, the same ;
or if. after just and reasonable time is allowed her, she neg
lects to bear children, back she goes to the home of her child
hood.
Mohammedans here, who can afford it, keep a good many
wives on hand. They are called wives, though I believe the
Koran only allows four genuine wives — the rest are concu
bines. The Emperor of Morocco don't know how many
wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that
is near enough — a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't
matter.
Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.
I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish
women, (for they are only human, and will expose their faces
for the admiration of a Christian dog when no male Moor
is by,) and I am full of veneration for the wisdom that leads
them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.
They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like
other savages the world over.
Many of the negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But
the moment a female slave becomes her master's concubine
her bonds are broken, and as soon as a male slave can read the
first chapter of the Koran (which contains the creed,) he can
no longer be held in bondage.
They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Moham
medan's comes on Friday, the Jew's on Saturday, and that of
the Christian Consuls on Sunday. The Jews are the most
radical. The Moor goes to his mosque about noon on his
Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the door,
performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his fore
head to the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and
goes back to his work.
86 SHARP PRACTICE OF MOHAMMEDAN PILGRIMS.
But the Jew shuts up shop ; will not touch copper or bronze
money at all ; soils his lingers with nothing meaner than silver
and gold ; attends the synagogue devoutly ; will not cook or
have any thing to do with tire ; and religiously refrains from
embarking in any enterprise.
The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled
to high distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thence
forward a great personage. Hundreds of Moors come to
Tangier every year, and embark for Mecca. They go part of
the way in English steamers ; and the ten or twelve dollars
they pay for passage is about all the trip costs. They take with
them a quantity of food, and when the commissary department
fails they " skirmish," as Jack terms it in his sinful, slangy
way. From the time they leave till they get home again,
they never wash, either on land or sea. They are usually
gone from five to seven months, and as they do not change
their clothes during all that time, they are totally unfit for the
drawing-room when they get back.
Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to
gather together the ten dollars their steamer passage costs;
and when one of them gets back he is a bankrupt forever
after. Few Moors can ever build up their fortunes again in
one short lifetime, after so reckless an outlay. In order to
confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood
and possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should
make the pilgrimage save bloated aristocrats who were worth
a hundred dollars in specie. But behold how iniquity can
circumvent the law ! For a consideration, the Jewish money
changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough
for him to swear himself through, and then receives it back
before the ship sails out of the harbor !
Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is,
that Spain sends her heaviest ships of war and her loudest
guns to astonish these Moslems ; while America, and other
nations, send only a little contemptible tub of a gun-boat occa
sionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn- by what they
see ; not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the
CATS FOR DINNER. 87
Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The
Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America,
and put their representatives to a deal of red tape cir
cumlocution before they grant them their common rights, let
alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish Minister
makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just
or not.
Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a dis
puted piece' of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the
city of Tetouan. She compromised on an augmentation of
her territory ; twenty million dollars indemnity in money ; and
peace. And then she gave up the city. But she never gave
it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats.
They would not compromise as long as the cats held out.
Spaniards are very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors
reverence cats as something sacred. So the Spaniards touched
them on a tender point that time. Their unfeline conduct in
eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a hatred toward them in
the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving them out
of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are
foes forever now. France had a Minister here once who em
bittered the nation against him in the most innocent way.
He killed a couple of battalions of cats (Tangier is full of
them,) and made a parlor carpet out of their hides. He made
his carpet in circles — first a circle of old gray tom-cats, with
their tails all pointing towards the centre; then a circle of
yellow cats ; next a circle of black cats and a circle of wrhite
ones ; then a circle of all sorts of cats ; and, finally, a centre
piece of assorted kittens. It was very beautiful; but the
Moors curse his memory to this day.
When we went to call on our American Consul-General,
to-day, I noticed that all possible games for parlor amusement
seemed to be represented on his centre-tables. I thought that
hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was correct. His is the
only American family in Tangier. There are many foreign
Consuls in this place ; but much visiting is not indulged in.
Tangier is clear out of the world ; and what is the use of
88
THE CONSUL'S FAMILY.
visiting when people have nothing on earth to talk about?
There is none. So each Consul's family stays at home
chiefly, and amuses itself as best it can. Tangier is full of
interest for one day, but after that it is a weary prison. The
Consul-General has been here five years, and has got enough
of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His
family seize upon their letters and papers when the mail
arrives, read them over and over again for two days or three,
talk them over and over again for two or three more, till they
wear them out, and after that, for days together, they eat and
drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old road, and see
the same old tiresome things that even decades of centu
ries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word !
THE CONSULS' FAMILY.
They have literally nothing whatever to talk about. The ar
rival of an American man-of-war is a god-send to them.
" Oh, Solitude, where are the charms which sages have seen in
thy face ?" It is the completest exile that I can conceive of.
I would seriously recommend to the Government of the
United States that when a man commits a crime so heinous
FAREWELL TO TANGIER. 89
that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they
make him Consul-General to Tangier.
I am glad to have seen Tangier — the second oldest
town in the world. But I am ready to bid it good bye, I
believe.
"We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morn
ing ; and doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port
within the next forty-eight hours.
CHAPTEE X.
WE passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City,
in mid-ocean. It was in all respects a characteristic
Mediterranean day — faultlessly beautiful. A cloudless sky ; a
refreshing summer wind ; a radiant sunshine that glinted
cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains
of water ; a sea beneath us that wras so wonderfully blue, so
richly, brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities
with the spell of its fascination.
They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean — a thing
that is certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The even
ing we sailed away from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock
was swimming in a creamy mist so rich, so soft, so enchant-
ingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle, that serene,
that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner-
gong and tarried to worship !
He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have
none of them things in our parts, do they ? I consider that
them effects is on account of the superior refragability, as you
may say, of the sun's diramic combination with the lymphatic
forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What should you think ?"
" Oh, go to bed !" Dan said that, and went away.
" Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man
makes an argument which another man can't answer. Dan
don't never stand any chance in an argument with me. And
he knows it, too. What should you say, Jack ?"
" Now doctor, don't you come bothering around me with
that dictionary bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I ? Then
you let me alone."
THE ORACLE IS DELIVERED OF AN OPINION. 91
POET LARIAT.
" He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old
Oracle, as they say, but the old man's most too many for 'em.
May be the Poet Lariat ain't satisfied with them deductions ?"
The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme, and went below.
" Tears that he can't
qualify, neither. Well,
I didn't expect nothing
out of him. I never see
one of them poets yet
that knowed any thing.
He'll go down, now,
and o'rind out about four
O
reams of the awfullest
slush about that old
rock, and give it to a
consul, or a pilot, or a
nigger, or any body he
comes across first which
he can impose on. Pity
but somebody'd take that poor old lunatic and dig all that
poetry rubbage out of him. Why can't a man put his in
tellect onto things that's some value ? Gibbons, and Hippo-
cratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient philosophers
was down on poets — «
" Doctor," I said, " you are going to invent authorities, now,
and I'll leave you, too. I always enjoy your conversation,
notwithstanding the luxuriance of your syllables, when the
philosophy you offer rests on your own responsibility ; but
when you begin to soar — when you begin to support it with
the evidence of authorities who are the creations of your own
fancy, I lose confidence."
That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a
sort of acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with
him. He wTas always persecuting the passengers with abstruse
propositions framed in language that no man could understand,
and they endured the exquisite torture a minute or two and
then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over half a
92 CELEBRATION CEREMONIES.
dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day ; from that time
forward he would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all
comers, and so tranquilly, blissfully happy !
But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon an
nounced the Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were
awake. But many of us got our information at a later hour,
from the almanac. All the flags were sent .aloft, except half a
dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship below,
and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance.
During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of
committees set to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the
afternoon the ship's company assembled aft, on deck, under the
awnings; the flute, the ' asthmatic melodeon, and the con
sumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir
chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacer
ating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody
mourned.
We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not
intentional and I do not indorse it,) and then the President,
throned behind a cable-locker with a national flag spread over
it, announced the " Keader," who rose up and read that same
old Declaration of Independence which we have all listened to
so often without paying any attention to what it said ; and
after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quar
ters and he made that same old speech about our national
greatness which we so religiously believe and so fervently ap
plaud. Now came the choir into court again, with the com
plaining instruments, and assaulted Hail Columbia ; and when
victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned with his
dreadful wild-goose stop turned on and the choir won of course.
A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little
gathering disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as
the Mediterranean was concerned.
At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was
recited with spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen
regular toasts were washed down with several baskets of cham
pagne. The speeches were bad — execrable, almost without
THE CAPTAIN'S ELOQUENT ADDRESS. 93
exception. In fact, without any exception, but one. Capt.
Duncan made a good speech ; he made the only good speech
of the evening. He said :
" LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : — May we all live to a green old
age, and be prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another
basket of champagne."
It was regarded as a very able effort.
The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those
miraculous balls on the promenade deck. We were not used
to dancing on an even keel, though, and it was only a ques
tionable success. But take it altogether, it was a bright, cheer
ful, pleasant Fourth.
Toward nightfall, the next evening, we steamed into the
great artificial harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw
the dying sunlight gild its clustering spires and ramparts, and
flood its leagues of environing verdure with a mellow radiance
that touched with an added charm the white villas that flecked the
landscape far and near. [Copyright secured according to law.]
There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier
from the ship. It was annoying. We were full of enthusi
asm — we wanted to see France ! Just at nightfall our party
of three contracted with a waterman for the privilege of using
his boat as a bridge — its stern was at our companion ladder and
its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow backed
out into the harbor. 1 told him in French that all we wanted
was to walk over his thwarts and step ashore, and asked him
what he went away out there for ? lie said he could not un
derstand me. I repeated. Still, he could not understand.
He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The doctor tried
him, but he could not understand the doctor. I asked this
boatman to explain his conduct, which he did ; and then I
couldn't understand him. Dan said :
u Oh, go to the pier, you old fool — that's where we want to go !"
We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak
to this foreigner in English — that he had better let us conduct
this business in the French language and not let the stranger
see how uncultivated he was.
94 "AVEZ-VOUS DU VIN?"
"Well, go on, go on," he said, "don't mind me. I don't
wish to interfere. Only, if you go on telling him in your kind
of French he never will find out where we want to go to.
That is what I think about it."
We rebuked him severely for this remark, and said we never
knew an ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The French
man spoke again, and the doctor said :
" There, now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain.
Means he is going to the hotel. Oh, certainly — we don't know
the French language."
This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further
criticism from the disaffected member. We coasted past the
sharp bows of a navy of great steamships, and stopped at last
at a government building on a stone pier. It was easy to re
member then, that the douain was the custom-house, and not
the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning
French politeness, the officers merely opened and closed our
satchels, declined to examine our passports, and sent us on our
way. We stopped at the first cafe" we came to, and entered.
An old woman seated us at a table and waited for orders.
The doctor said :
" Avez vous du vin ?"
The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with
elaborate distinctness of articulation :
" Avez-vous du — vin !"
The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said :
" Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere.
Let me try her. Madame, avez-vous du vin ? It isn't any use,
doctor — take the witness."
"Madame, avez-vous du vin — on fromage — pain — pickled
pigs' feet — beurre — des cefs — du benf- — horse-radish, sour-crout,
hog and hominy — any thing, any thing in the world that can
stay a Christian stomach !"
She said :
" Bless you, why didn't you speak English before ? — I don't
know any thing about your plagued French !"
The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled
FIRST SUPPER IN FRANCE.
95
the supper, and we dispatched it in angry silence and got away
as soon as we could. Here we were in beautiful France — in a
vast stone house of quaint architecture — surrounded by all
X\
FIRST SUPPER IN FRANCE.
manner of curiously worded French signs — stared at by
strangely-habited, bearded French people — every thing grad
ually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that
at last, and beyond all question we were in beautiful France and
absorbing its nature to the forgetfulness of every thing else,
and coming to feel the happy romance of the thing in all its
enchanting delightfulness — and to think of this skinny veteran
intruding with her vile English, at such a moment, to blow the
fair vision to the winds ! It was exasperating.
We set out to find the centre of the city, inquiring the di
rection every now and then. "We never did succeed in making
any body understand just exactly what we wanted, and neither
did we ever succeed in comprehending just exactly what they
96
LOST. — FOUND.
POINTING.
said in reply — but then they always pointed — they always did
that, and we bowed politely and said "Merci, Monsieur," and
so it was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member,
any way. He was restive under
these victories and often asked :
"What did that pirate say?"
" Why, he told us which way
to go, to find the Grand Casino."
" Yes, but what did he say?"
" Oh, it don't matter what he
said — we understood him. These
are educated people — not like that
absurd boatman."
"Well, I wish they were edu
cated enough to tell a man a di
rection that goes some where —
for we've been going around in
a circle for an hour — I've passed
this same old drug store seven times."
We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood, (but we
knew it was not.) It was plain that it would not do to pass
that drug store again, though — we might go on asking direc
tions, but we must cease from following finger-pointings if we
hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected member.
A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bor
dered by blocks of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored
stone, — every house and every block precisely like all the other
houses and all the other blocks for a mile, and all brilliantly
lighted, — brought us at last to the principal thoroughfare. On
every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations of gas-
burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the side
walks — hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation and
laughter every where ! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre
et de la Paix, and wrote down who we were, where we were
born, what our occupations were, the place we came from last,
whether we were married or single, how we liked it, how old
we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to
A FRENCHY SCENE. 97
get there, and a great deal of information of similar import
ance — all for the benefit of the landlord and the secret police.
We hired a guide and began the business of sight-seeing im
mediately. That first night on French soil was a stirring one.
I can not think of half the places we went to, or what we par
ticularly saw ; we had no disposition to examine carefully into
any thing at all — we only wanted to glance and go — to move,
keep mo v ing ! The spirit of the country was upon us. We
sat down, finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and called
for unstinted champagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats
where it costs nothing of consequence ! There were about five
hundred people in that dazzling place, I suppose, though the
walls being papered entirely with mirrors, so to speak, one could
not really tell but that there were a hundred thousand.
Young, daintily dressed exquisites and young, stylishly dressed
women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in couples
and groups about innumerable marble-topped tables, and ate
fancy suppers, drank wine and kept up a chattering din of con
versation that was dazing to the senses. There was a stage
at the far end, and a large orchestra ; and every now and then
actors and actresses in preposterous comic dresses came out
and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to judge by
their absurd actions ; but that audience merely suspended its
chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once
applauded ! I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready
to laugh at any thing.
7
CHAPTER XI.
WE are getting foreignized rapidly, and with facility.
We are getting reconciled to halls and bed-chambers
with unhomelike stone floors, and no carpets — floors that ring
to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness that is death to
sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless
waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your
back and your elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend
orders, quick to fill them ; thankful for a gratuity without re
gard to the amount ; and always polite — never otherwise than
polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet — a really polite
hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. We are getting used to driv
ing right into the central court of the hotel, in the midst of a
fragrant circle of vines and flowers, and in the midst, also, of
parties of gentlemen sitting quietly reading the paper and
smoking. We are getting used to ice frozen by artificial pro
cess in ordinary bottles — the only kind of ice they have here.
We are getting used to all these things; but we are not getting
used to carrying our own soap. We are sufficiently civilized
to carry our own combs and tooth-brushes ; but this thing of
.having to ring for soap every time we wash is new to us, and
not pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our
heads and faces thoroughly wet, or just when we think we
have been in the bath-tub long enough, and then, of course, an
annoying delay follows. These Marseillaise make Marseillaise
hymns, and Marseilles vests, and Marseilles soap for all the
world ; but they never sing their hymns, or wear their vests,
or wash with .their soap themselves.
RINGING FOR SOAP.
99
We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the
table d'hote with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction.
We take soup ; then
wait a few minutes
for the fish ; a few
minutes more and
the plates are chang
ed, and the roast
beef comes ; another
change and we take
peas; change again
and take lentils ;
change and take
snail patties (I pre
fer grasshoppers ;)
change and take
roast chicken and sal
ad ; then strawberry
pie and ice cream;
then green figs,
pears, oranges, green
almonds, <fcc. ; finally
coffee. Wine with
every course, of course, being in France. With such a cargo
on board, digestion is a slow process, and we must sit long in
the cool chambers and smoke — and read French newspapers,
which have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight
story till you get to the " nub " of it, and then a word drops in
that no man can translate, and that story is ruined. An em
bankment fell on some Frenchmen yesterday, and the papers
are full of it to-day — but whether those sufferers were killed,
or crippled, or bruised, or only scared, is more than I can pos
sibly make out, and yet I would just give any thing to know.
We were troubled a little at dinner to-day, by the conduct
of an American, who talked very loudly and coarsely, and
laughed boisterously where all others were so quiet and well-
behaved. He ordered wine with a royal flourish, and said :
KINGING FOE SOAP.
100
"AN AMERICAN, SIR!"
" I never dine without wine, sir," (which was a pitiful false
hood,) and looked around upon the company to bask in the
admiration he expected to find in their faces. All these airs
in a land where they would
as soon expect to leave the
soup out of the bill of fare
as the wine ! — in a land
where wine is nearly as
common among all ranks
as water! This fellow
said : "I am a free-born
sovereign, sir, an Ameri
can, sir, and I want every
body to know it!" He
did not mention that he
was a lineal descendant of
Balaam's ass ; but every
body knew that without
his telling it.
"We have driven in the Prado — that superb avenue bordered
with patrician mansions and noble shade-trees — and have
visited the Chateau Boarely and its curious museum. They
showed us a miniature cemetery there — a copy of the
first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The
delicate little skeletons were lying in broken vaults, and had
their household gods and kitchen utensils with them. The
original of this cemetery was dug up in the principal street of
the city a few years ago. It had remained there, only twelve
feet under ground, for a matter of twenty-five hundred years,
or thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built Rome, and
thought something of founding a city on this spot, but gave
up the idea. He may have been personally acquainted with
some of these Phoenicians w^hose skeletons we have been ex
amining.
In the great Zoological Gardens, we found specimens of all
the animals the world produces, I think, including a drome
dary, a monkey ornamented with tufts of brilliant blue and
THE "PILGRIM" BIRD.
101
carmine hair — a very gorgeous monkey he was — a hippopot
amus from the Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with a
beak like a powder-horn, and close-fitting wings like the tails
of a dress coat. This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and
his shoulders stooped forward a little, and looked as if he had
his hands under his coat tails. Such tranquil stupidity, such
supernatural gravity, such self-righteousness, and such ineffa
ble self-complacency as were in the countenance and attitude
of that gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed, and pre
posterously uncomely bird ! lie was so ungainly, so pimply
about the head, so scaly about the legs ; yet so serene, so un
speakably satisfied ! He was the most comical looking creature
that can be imagined. It
was good to hear Dan and
the doctor laugh — such nat
ural and such enjoyable
laughter had not been heard
among our excursionists
since our ship sailed away
from America. This bird
was a god-send to us, and I
should be an ingrate if I
forgot to make honorable
mention of him in these
pages. Ours was a pleas
ure excursion ; therefore we
stayed with that bird an
hour, and made the most of
him. We stirred him up
occasionally, but he only
unclosed an eye and slowly
closed it again, abating no
jot of his stately piety of "TIIB PILGRIM.
demeanor or his tremendous
seriousness. He only seemed to say, " Defile not Heaven's
anointed with unsanctified hands." We did not know his
name, and so we called him " The Pilgrim." Dan said :
102 STRANGE COMPANIONSHIP.
" All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection."
The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a com
mon cat! This cat had a fashion of climbing up the ele
phant's hind legs, and roosting on his back. She would sit
up there, with her paws curved under her breast, and sleep in
the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the elephant at
first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she would
go aft and climb up again. She persisted until she finally
conquered the elephant's prejudices, and now they are insep
arable friends. The cat plays about her comrade's forefeet or
his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then she goes aloft
out of clanger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs
lately, that pressed his companion too closely.
We hired a sail-boat and a guide and made an excursion to
one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle cl'If.
This ancient fortress has a melancholy history. It has been
used as a prison for political offenders for two or three hun
dred years, and its dungeon walls are scarred with the rudely
carved names of many and many a captive who fretted his
life away here, and left no record of himself but these sad
epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the names
were ! And their long-departed owners seemed to throng the
gloomy cells and corridors with their phantom shapes. We
loitered through dungeon after dungeon, away down into the
living rock below the level of the sea, it seemed. Sanies
every where ! — some plebeian, some noble, some even princely.
Plebeian, prince, and noble, had one solicitude in common — they
would not be forgotten ! They could suffer solitude, inac
tivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever dis
turbed ; but they could not bear the thought of being utterly
forgotten by the world. Hence the carved names. In one
cell, where a little light penetrated, a man had lived twenty-
seven years without seeing the face of a human being — lived
in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but his own
thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough, and hopeless
enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he
needed was conveyed to his cell by night, through a wicket.
A LONG CAPTIVITY.
103
This man carved the walls of his prison-house from floor to
roof with all manner of figures of men and animals, grouped
in intricate designs. He had
toiled there year after year, at
his self-appointed task, while
infants grew to boyhood — to vigorous youth — idled through
school and college — acquired a profession — claimed man's ma
ture estate — married and looked back to infancy as to a thing
104 DUNGEON OF THE "IRON
of some vague, ancient time, almost. But who shall tell how
many ages it seemed to this prisoner? "With the one, time
flew sometimes; with the other, never — it crawled always.
To the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed made of
minutes instead of hours ; to the other, those self-same nights
had been like all other nights of dungeon life, and seemed
made of slow, dragging weeks, instead of hours and minutes.
One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his
walls, and brief prose sentences — brief, but full of pathos. These
spoke not of himself and his hard estate ; but only of the shrine
where his spirit fled the prison to worship — of home and the
idols that were templed there. He never lived to see them.
The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-cham
bers at home are wide — fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dis
mal cells in which two of Dumas' heroes passed their confine
ment — heroes of " Monte Christo." It was here that the
brave Abbe* wrote a book with his own blood ; with a pen
made of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made
out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food ;
and then dug through the thick wall with some trifling instru
ment which he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or
table cutlery, and freed Dantes from his chains. It was a pity
that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come to
naught at last.
They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated
" Iron Mask " — that ill-starred brother of a hard-hearted king
of France — was confined for a season, before he was sent to
hide the strange mystery of his life from the curious in the
dungeons of St. Marguerite. The place had a far greater
interest for us than it could have had if we had known be
yond all question who the Iron Mask was, and what his his
tory had been, and why this most unusual punishment had been
meted out to him. Mystery! That was the charm. That
speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so
freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed
with its piteous secret, had been here. These dank walls had
known the man whose dolorous story is a sealed book forever !
There was fascination in the spot.
CHAPTEE XII.
"\TT~E have come five hundred miles by rail through the
* * heart of France. What a bewitching land it is ! —
What a garden ! Surely the leagues of bright green lawns
are swept and brushed and watered • every day and their
grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped
and measured and their symmetry preserved by the most
architectural of gardeners. Surely the long straight rows of
stately poplars that divide the beautiful landscape like the
squares of a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and
their uniform height determined with a spirit level. Surely
the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and
sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of sym
metry, cleanliness and order attained ? It is wonderful. There
are no unsightly stone walls, and never a fence of any kind.
There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish any where — nothing
that even hints at untidiness — nothing that ever suggests
neglect. All is orderly and beautiful — every thing is charming
to the eye.
We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between
its grassy banks ; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrub
bery; of quaint old red-tiled villages with mossy medieval
cathedrals looming out of their midst ; of wooded hills with
ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles projecting above
the foliage ; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us, such
visions of fabled fairy-land !
We knew, then, what the poet meant, when he sang of —
" — thy cornfields green, and sutmy vines,
0 pleasant land of France!"
106 SUMMER GARB OF THE LANDSCAPE.
And it is a pleasant land. E"o word describes it so felici
tously as that one. They say there is no word for " home " in
the French language. Well, considering that they have the
article itself in such an attractive aspect, they ought to manage
to get along without the word. Let us not waste too much
pity on "homeless" France. I have observed that French
men abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to
France some time or other. I am not surprised at it now.
We are not infatuated with these French railway cars,
though. We took first class passage, not because we wished
to attract attention by doing a thing which is uncommon in
Europe, but because we could make our journey quicker by so
doing. It is hard to make railroading pleasant, in any country.
It is too tedious. Stage-coaching is infinitely more delightful.
Once I crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the
West, in a stage-coach, from the Missouri line to California,
and since then all my pleasure trips must be measured to that
rare holiday frolic. Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and
rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary
moment, never a lapse of interest ! The first seven hundred
miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer
and smoother than any sea, and figured with designs fitted to
its magnitude — the shadows of the clouds. Here were no
scenes but summer scenes, and no disposition inspired by them
but to lie at full length on the mail sacks, in the grateful
breeze, and dreamily smoke the pipe of peace — what other,
where all was repose and contentment? In cool mornings,
before the sun was fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city
toiling and moiling, to perch in the foretop with the driver
and see the six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping
of a whip that never touched them ; to scan the blue distances
of a world that knew no lords but us ; to cleave the wind with
uncovered head and feel the sluggish pulses rousing to the spirit
of a speed that pretended to the resistless rush of a typhoon !
Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes ; of limitless
panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pin
nacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the
PECULIARITIES OF FRENCH CARS. 107
eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the
setting sun ; of dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and
never-melting snows, where thunders and lightnings and tem
pests warred magnificently at our feet and the storm-clouds
above swung their shredded banners in our very faces !
But I forgot. I am in elegant France, now, and not skur-
rying through the great South Pass and the Wind River
Mountains, among antelopes and buffaloes, and painted In
dians on the war path. It is not meet that I should make too
disparaging comparisons between hum-drum travel on a rail
way and that royal summer flight across a continent in a
stage-coach. I meant in the beginning, to say that railway
journeying is tedious and tiresome, and so it is — though at the
time, I was thinking particularly of a dismal fifty-hour pil
grimage between New York and St. Louis. Of course our
trip through France was not really tedious, because all its
scenes and experiences were new and strange ; but as Dan
says, it had its " discrepancies."
The cars are built in compartments that hold eight persons
each. Each compartment is partially subdivided, and so there
are two tolerably distinct parties of four in it. Four face the
other four. The seats and backs are thickly padded and cush
ioned and are very comfortable ; you can smoke, if you wish ;
there are no bothersome peddlers ; you are saved the infliction
of a multitude of disagreeable fellow-passengers. So far, so
well. But then the conductor locks you in when the train
starts ; there is no water to drink, in the car ; there is no
heating apparatus for night travel ; if a drunken rowdy should
get in, you could not remove a matter of twenty seats from
him, or enter another car ; but above all, if you are worn out
and must sleep, you must sit up and do it in naps, with
cramped legs and in a torturing misery that leaves you withered
and lifeless the next day — for behold they have not that culmi
nation of all charity and human kindness, a sleeping car, in
all France. I prefer the American system. It has not so
many grievous " discrepancies."
In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no
108
FRENCH POLITENESS.
mistakes. Every third man wears a uniform, and whether he
be a Marshal of the Empire or a brakeman, he is ready and
perfectly willing to answer all your questions with tireless
politeness, ready to tell you which car to take, yea, and ready
to go and put you into it to make sure that you shall not
go astray. You can not pass into the waiting-room of the
depot till you have secured your ticket, and you can not pass
from its only exit till the train is at its threshold to receive
RAILROAD OFFICIAL IN FRANCE.
you. Once on board, the train will not start till your ticket
has been examined — till every passenger's ticket has been
inspected. This is chiefly for your own good. If by any
possibility you have managed to take the wrong train, you
will be handed over to a polite official who will take you
whither you belong, and bestow you with many an affable
bow. Your ticket wrill be inspected every now and then along
the route, and when it is time to change cars you will know it.
You are in the hands of officials who zealously study your
welfare and your interest, instead of turning their talents to
the invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing
you, as is very often the main employment of that exceedingly
self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America.
But the happiest regulation in French raihvay government,
THIRTY MINUTES FOR DINNER!"
109
is — thirty minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of
flabby rolls, muddy coffee, questionable eggs, gutta-percha
beef, and pies whose conception and execution are a dark and
bloody mystery to all save the cook that created them ! "No ;
we sat calmly down — it was in old Dijon, which is so easy to
spell and so impossible to pronounce, except when you civilize
it and call it Demijohn — and poured out rich Burgundian
wines and munched calmly through a long table d'hote bill of
fare, snail-patties, delicious fruits and all, then paid the trifle
it cost and stepped happily aboard the train again, without
PAY
0EFOREIAK1HC
S EAT<S H
"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS." — AMERICA.
once cursing the railroad company. A rare experience, and
one to be treasured forever.
They say they do not have accidents on these French roads,
and I think it must be true. If I remember rightly, we passed
high above wagon roads, or through tunnels under them, but
never crossed them on their own level. About every quarter
of a mile, it seemed to me, a man came out and held up a club
till the train went by, to signify that every thing was safe
ahead. Switches were changed a mile in advance, by pulling
a wire rope that passed along the ground by the rail, from
110
WHY THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS.
station to station. Signals for the day and signals for the night
gave constant and timely notice of the position of switches.
No, they have no railroad accidents to speak of in France.
But why ? Because when one occurs, somebody has to hang for
it t * Not hang, may be, but be punished at least with such
g to be shucl-
it!
vigor of emphasis as to make negligence a thin
dered at by railroad officials for many a day thereafter. " No
blame attached to the officers " — that lying and disaster-breed
ing verdict so common to our soft-hearted juries, is seldom
11 ^
"THIRTY MINUTES FOR DINNER!" — FRANCE.
rendered in France. If the trouble occurred in the conduct
or's department, that officer must suffer if his subordinate
can not be proven guilty ; if in the engineer's department, and
the case be similar, the engineer must answer.
The Old Travelers — those delightful parrots who have
" been here before," and know more about the country than
Louis Napoleon knows now or ever will know, — tell us these
things, and we believe them because they are pleasant things
to believe, and because they are plausible and savor of the
* They go on the principle that it is better that one innocent man should suffer
than five hundred.
THE
OLD TRAVELERS.
Ill
rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about us
every where.
But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them
prate, and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we
see them. They always throw out a few feelers ; they never
cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual
and know that he has
not traveled. Then
they open their throt
tle-valves, and how
they do brag, and
sneer, and swell, and
soar, and blaspheme
the sacred name of
Truth ! Their cen
tral idea, their grand
aim, is to subjugate
you, keep you down,
make you feel insig
nificant and humble in
the blaze of their cos
mopolitan glory ! They
will not let you know any thing. They sneer at your most
inoffensive suggestions ; they laugh unfeelingly at your treas
ured dreams of foreign lands ; they brand the statements of
your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities;
they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair
images they have set up for your willing worship with the
pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast ! But still I love the
Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes ;, for
their supernatural ability to bore ; for their delightful asinine
vanity ; for their luxuriant fertility of imagination ; for their
startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity !
By Lyons and the Saone (where we saw the lady of Lyons
and thought little of her comeliness ;) by Villa Franca, Ton-
nere, venerable Sens, Melun, Fontainebleau, and scores of other
beautiful cities, we swept, always noting the absence of hog-
THE OLD TRAVELER.
112 PARIS AT LAST.
wallows, broken fences, cowlots, unpainted houses and mud,
and always noting, as well, the presence of cleanliness, grace,
taste in adorning and beautifying, even to the disposition of a
tree or the turning of a hedge, the marvel of roads in perfect
repair, void of ruts and guiltless of even an inequality of sur
face — we bowled along, hour after hour, that brilliant summer
day, and as nightfall approached we entered a wilderness of
odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped through it, and then,
excited, delighted, and half persuaded that we were only the
sport of a beautiful dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris !
What excellent order they kept about that vast depot!
There was no frantic crowding and jostling, no shouting and
swearing, and no swaggering intrusion of services by rowdy
hackmen. These latter gentry stood outside — stood quietly
by their long line of vehicles and said never a word. A kind
of hackman-general seemed to have the whole matter of trans
portation in his hands. He politely received the passengers
and ushered them to the kind of conveyance they wranted, and
told the driver where to deliver them. There was no " talking
back," no dissatisfaction about overcharging, no grumbling
about any thing. In a little while we were speeding through
the streets of Paris, and delightfully recognizing certain names
and places with wThich books had long ago made us familiar.
It was like meeting an old friend when we read " Rue de
Rivoli " on the street corner • we knew the genuine vast palace
of the Louvre as well as we knew its picture ; when we passed
by the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it
was, or to remind us that on its site once stood the grim Bas-
tile, that grave of human hopes and happiness, that dismal
prison-house within whose dungeons so many young faces put
on the wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so
many brave hearts broke.
We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds
put into one room, so that we might be together, and then we
went out to a restaurant, just after lamp-lighting, and ate a
comfortable, satisfactory, lingering dinner. It was a pleasure
to eat where every thing was so tidy, the food so well cooked,
SEEING THE SIGHTS. 113
the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing company
so moust ached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and wonder
fully Frenchy ! All the surroundings were gay and enliven
ing. Two hundred people sat at little tables on the sidewalk,
sipping wine and coffee ; the streets were thronged with light
vehicles and with joyous pleasure seekers ; there was music
in the air, life and action all about us, and a conflagration of
gaslight every where !
After dinner we felt like seeing such Parisian specialties as
we might see without distressing exertion, and so we sauntered
through the brilliant streets and looked at the dainty trifles in
variety stores and jewelry shops. Occasionally, merely for the
pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the
rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of
their native language, and while they writhed, we impaled
them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own
vile verbs and participles.
We noticed that in the jewelry stores they had some of the
articles marked " gold," and some labeled " imitation." We
wondered at this extravagance of honesty, and inquired into
the matter. We were informed that inasmuch as most people
are not able to tell false gold from the genuine article, the
government compels jewelers to have their gold work assayed
and stamped officially according to its fineness, and their
imitation work duly labeled with the sign of its falsity. They
told us the jewelers would not dare to violate this law, and
that whatever a stranger bought in one of their stores might
be depended upon as being strictly what it was represented
to be. — Yerily, a wonderful land is France !
Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy
it had been a cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some
day in a palatial barber-shop of Paris. I wished to recline at
full length in a cushioned invalid chair, with pictures about
me, and sumptuous furniture ; with frescoed walls and gilded
arches above me, and vistas of Corinthian columns stretching
far before me ; with perfumes of Araby to intoxicate my senses,
and the slumbrous drone of distant noises to soothe me to
A BARBAROUS ATROCITY.
sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up regretfully
and find my face as smooth and as soft as an infant's. Depart
ing, I would lift my hands above that barber's head and say,
" Heaven bless you, my son !"
So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but
never a barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making
establishments, with shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound
upon the heads of painted waxen brigands who stared out from
glass boxes upon the passer-by, with their stony eyes, and
scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances. We
shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that
the wig-makers must of necessity be the barbers as well,
since we could find no single legitimate representative of the
fraternity. We entered and asked, and found that it was
even so.
I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where
my room was. I said, never mind where my room was, I
wanted to be shaved — there, on the spot. The doctor said he
would be shaved also. Then there was an excitement among
O
those two barbers-! There was a wild consultation, and after
wards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of
razors from obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next
they took us into a little mean, shabby back room ; they got
two ordinary sitting-room chairs and placed us in them, with
our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss vanished into thin
air!
I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-
making villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and
finished by plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I ex
pelled the nasty stuff with a strong English expletive and said,
" Foreigner, beware !" Then this outlaw strapped his razor on
his boot, hovered over me ominously for six fearful seconds,
and then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruc
tion. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from
my face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed and raved,
and the other boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong
and thick. Let us draw the curtain over this harrowing scene.
A BARBAROUS ATROCITY.
115
Suffice it that I submitted, and went through with the cruel
infliction of a shave by a French barber ; tears of exquisite
agony coursed down my cheeks, now and then, but I survived.
Then the incipient assassin held a basin of water under my
chin and slopped its contents over my face, and into my
bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense
of washing away the soap and blood. He dried my features
A DECIDED SHAVE.
with a towel, and was going to comb my hair ; but I asked to
be excused. I said, with withering irony, that it was sufficient
to be skinned — I declined to be scalped.
I went away from there with my handkerchief about my
face, and never, never, never desired to dream of palatial
Parisian barber-shops any more. The truth is, as I believe I
have since found out, that they have no barber shops worthy
of the name, in Paris — and no barbers, either, for that matter.
The impostor who does duty as a barber, brings his pans and
116 ABSURD BILLIARDS.
napkins and implements of torture to your residence and
deliberately skins you in your private apartments. Ah, I
have suffered, suffered, suffered, here in Paris, but never mind
— the time is coming when I shall have a dark and bloody
revenge. Some day a Parisian barber will come to my room
to skin me, and from that day forth, that barber will never be
heard of more.
At eleven o'clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly
referred to billiards. Joy ! We had played billiards in the
Azores with balls that were not round, and on an ancient
table that was very little smoother than a brick pavement —
one of those wretched old things with dead cushions, and with
patches in the faded cloth and invisible obstructions that made
the balls describe the most astonishing and unsuspected angles
and perform feats in the way of unlooked-for and almost impos
sible " scratches," that were perfectly bewildering. We had
played at Gibraltar with balls the size of a walnut, on a table
like a public square — and in both instances we achieved far
more aggravation than amusement. We expected to fare
better here, but we were mistaken. The cushions were a good
deal higher than the balls, and as the balls had a fashion of
always stopping under the cushions, we accomplished very
little in the way of caroms. The cushions were hard and
unelastic, and the cues were so crooked that in making a shot
you had to allow for the curve or you would infallibly put the
" English " on the wrong side of the ball. Dan was to mark
while the doctor and I played. At the end of an hour neither
of us had made a count, and so Dan was tired of keeping tally
with nothing to tally, and we were heated and angry and
disgusted. We paid the heavy bill — about six cents — and
said we would call around some time when we had a week to
spend, and finish the game.
We adjourned to one of those pretty cafe's and took supper
and tested the wines of the country, as we had been instructed
to do, and found them harmless and imexciting. They might
have been exciting, however, if we had chosen to drink a suffi
ciency of them.
GASTLY EXPERIENCE.*
117
To close our first day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we
now sought our grand room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre
and climbed into our sumptuous bed, to read and smoke — but
alas!
It was pitiful,
In a whole city-full,
Gas we had none.
No gas to read by — nothing but dismal candles. It was a
shame. We tried to map out excursions for the morrow ; we
puzzled over French " Guides to Paris ;" we talked disjointedly,
in a vain endeavor to make head or tail of the wild chaos of
A GAS-TLY SUBSTITUTE
the day's sights and experiences; we subsided to indolent
smoking ; we gaped and yawned, and stretched — then feebly
wondered if we were really and truly in renowned Paris, and
drifted drowsily away into that vast mysterious void which
men call sleep.
* Joke by the Doctor.
CHAPTEE XIII.
THE next morning we were np and dressed at ten o'clock.
We went to the commissionaire of the hotel — I don't
know what a commissionaire is, but that is the man we went to
—and told him we wanted a guide. He said the great Inter
national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen
and Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to
find a good guide unemployed. He said he usually kept a
dozen or two on hand, but he only had three now. He called
them. One looked so like a very pirate that we let him go at
once. The next one spoke with a simpering precision of pro
nunciation that was irritating, and said : ,
"If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to
me rattain in hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat
is magnifique to look upon in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky
ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw."
He would have done well to have stopped there, because he
had that much by heart and said it right off without making
a mistake. But his self-complacency seduced him into at
tempting a flight into regions of unexplored English, and the
reckless experiment was his ruin. Within ten seconds he was
so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn and
bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever
have gotten him out of it with credit. It was plain enough
that he could not " speaky " the English quite as " pairfaite
maw " as he had pretended he could.
The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but
he had a noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a
MONSIEUR BILLFINGER.
119
high silk hat which was a little old, but had been carefully
brushed. He wore second-hand kid gloves, in good repair,
THE THREE GUIDES.
and carried a small rattan cane with a curved handle — a
female leg, of ivory. He stepped as gently and as daintily as
a cat crossing a muddy street ; and oh, he was urbanity ; he
was quiet, unobtrusive self-possession ; he was deference itself!
He spoke softly and guardedly; and when he was about to
make a statement on his sole responsibility, or offer a sugges
tion, he weighed it by drachms and scruples first, with the
crook of his little stick placed meditatively to his teeth. His
opening speech was perfect. It was perfect in construction,
in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation—
every thing. He spoke little and guardedly, after that. We
were charmed. We were more than charmed — we were over
joyed. We hired him at once. We never even asked him his
price. This man — our lackey, our servant, our unquestioning
slave though he was, was still a gentleman — we could see that
— while of the other two one was coarse and awkward, and the
other was a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's name.
He drew from his pocket-book a snowy little card, and passed
it to us with a profound bow :
A. BILLFINGER,
Guide to Paris, France, Germany,
Spain, &c., &c.,
Grande Hotel du Louvre.
120 RE-CHRISTENING THE FRENCHMAN.
" Billfinger ! Oh, carry me home to die !"
That was an " aside " from Dan. The atrocious name grated
harshly on my ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive,
and even to like, a countenance that strikes us unpleasantly
at first, but few of us, I fancy, become reconciled to a jar
ring name so easily. I was almost sorry we had hired this
man, his name was so unbearable. However, no matter. We
were impatient to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to call
a carriage, and then the doctor said :
" "Well, the guide goes with the barber-shop, with the bil
liard-table, with the gasless room, and may be with many an
other pretty romance of Paris. I expected to have a guide
named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la Chartreuse,
or something that would sound grand in letters to the villagers
at home ; but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Bill-
finger ! Oh ! this is absurd, you know. This will never do.
We can't say Billfinger; it is nauseating. Name him over
again : what had we better call him ? Alexis du Caulain-
court ?"
" Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville," I suggested.
" Call him Ferguson," said Dan.
That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without de
bate, we expunged Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Fer
guson.
The carriage — an open barouche — was ready. Ferguson
mounted beside the driver, and we whirled away to breakfast.
As was proper, Mr. Ferguson stood by to transmit our orders
and answer questions. Bye and bye, he mentioned casually —
the artful adventurer — that he would go and get his breakfast
as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get
along without him, and that we would not want to loiter
o ~
about and wait for him. We asked him to sit down and eat
with us. He begged, with many a bow, to be excused. It
was not proper, he said ; he would sit at another table. We
ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.
Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake.
As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always
"SOLD." 121
hungry; he was always thirsty. He came early; he stayed
late ; lie could not pass a restaurant ; he looked with a lecher
ous eye upon every wine shop. Suggestions to stop, excuses
to eat and to drink were forever on his lips. We tried all we
could to fill him so full that he would have no room to spare
for a fortnight ; but it was a failure. He did not hold enough
to smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite.
He had another " discrepancy " about him. He was always
wanting us to buy things. On the shallowest pretenses, he
would inveigle us into shirt stores, boot stores, tailor shops,
glove shops — any where under the broad sweep of the heavens
that there seemed a chance of our buying any thing. Any
one could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a per
centage on the sales ; but in our blessed innocence we didn't,
until this feature of his conduct grew unbearably prominent.
One day, Dan happened to mention that he thought of buying
three or four silk dress patterns for presents. Ferguson's
hungry eye was upon him in an instant. In the course of
twenty minutes, the carriage stopped.
"What's this?"
" Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris — ze most cele
brate."
" What did you come here for? We told you to take us to
the palace of the Louvre."
" I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk."
" You are not required to t suppose ' things for the party,
Ferguson. We do not wish to tax your energies too much.
We will bear some of the burden and heat of 'the day our
selves. We will endeavor to do such i supposing ' as is really
necessary to be done. Drive on." So spake the doctor.
Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before
another silk store. The doctor said :
" Ah, the palace of the Louvre : beautiful, beautiful edifice !
Does the Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson ?"
"Ah, doctor! you do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come
there directly. But since we pass right by zis store, where is
such beautiful silk — "
122
SOLD.
" Ah ! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did
not wish to purchase any silks to-day ; but in my absent-
mindedness I forgot it. I also meant to tell you we
wished to go directly to the Louvre ; but I forgot that also.
However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming care
lessness, Ferguson. Drive on."
Within the half hour, we stopped again — in front of another
silk store. We were angry ; but the doctor was always serene,
always smooth-voiced. He said :
" At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how
small ! how exquisitely fashioned ! how charmingly situated !
— Venerable, venerable pile —
" Pairdon, doctor, zis is not ze Louvre — it is —
" Whati&itl"
" I have ze idea — it come to me in a moment — zat ze silk in
zis magazin —
ZE SILK MAGAZIX."
" Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you
"SOLD." 123
that we did not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also in
tended to tell you that we yearned to go immediately to the
palace of the Louvre, but enjoying the happiness of seeing you
devour four breakfasts this morning has so filled me with
pleasurable emotions that I neglect the commonest interests
of the time. However, we will proceed now to the Louvre,
Ferguson."
" But doctor," (excitedly,) " it will take not a minute — not
but one small minute ! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he
not wish to — but only look at ze silk — look at ze beautiful
fabric." [Then pleadingly.] " Salr— just only one leetle mo
ment !"
Dan said, " Confound the idiot ! I don't want to see any
silks to-day, and I won't look at them. Drive on."
And the doctor : " We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our
hearts yearn for the Louvre. Let us journey on — let us jour
ney on."
" But doctor ! it is only one moment — one leetle moment.
And ze time wrill be save — entirely save! Because zere is
nothing to see, now — it is too late. It want ten minute to
four and ze Louvre close at four — only one leetle moment, doc
tor!"
The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a
gallon of champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We
got no sight of the countless treasures of art in the Louvre
galleries that day, and our only poor little satisfaction was in
the reflection that Ferguson sold not a solitary silk dress pat
tern.
I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abus
ing that accomplished knave, Billfinger, and partly to show
whosoever shall read this how Americans fare at the hands of
the Paris guides, and what sort of people Paris guides are.
It need not be supposed that we were a stupider or an easier
prey than our countrymen generally are, for we were not.
The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to
Paris for the first time and sees its sights alone or in company
with others as little experienced as himself. I shall visit
THE INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION.
Paris again some day, and then let the guides beware! I
shall go in my war-paint — I shall carry my tomahawk along.
I think we have lost but little time in Paris. "We have
gone to bed every night tired
• out. Of course we visited the
renowned International Ex
position. All the world did
that. We went there on our
third day in Paris — and we
stayed there nearly two hours.
That was our first and last visit.
To tell the truth, we saw at a
glance that one would have to
spend weeks — yea, even months
— in that monstrous establish
ment, to get an intelligible idea
of it. It was a wonderful
show, but the moving masses
of people of all nations we
saw there were a still more
wonderful show. I discovered
that if I were to stay there a
month, I should still find my
self looking at the people in
stead of the inanimate objects
on exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious old
tapestries of the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs
came by, and their dusky faces and quaint costumes called my
attention away at once. I watched a silver swan, which had
a living grace about his movements, and a living intelligence
in his eyes — watched him swimming about as comfortably and
as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead
of a jeweller's shop — watched him seize a silver fish from
under the water and hold up his head and go through all the
customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it — but the
moment it disappeared down his throat some tattooed South
Sea Islanders approached and I yielded to their attractions.
RETURN IN WAR-PAINT.
FINE MILITARY REVIEW. 125
Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years
old which looked strangely like a, modern Colt, but just then
I heard that the Empress of the French was in another part
of the building, and hastened away to see what she might
look like. We heard martial music — we saw an unusual
number of soldiers walking hurriedly about — there was a
general movement among the people. "We inquired what it
was all about, and learned that the Emperor of the French
and the Sultan of Turkey were about to review twenty-five
thousand troops at the Arc de TEtoik. We immediately de
parted. I had a greater anxiety to see these men than I could
have had to see twenty Expositions.
"We drove away and took up a position in an open space
opposite the American Minister's house. A speculator bridged
a couple of barrels with a board and we hired standing-places
on it. Presently there was a sound of distant music ; in an
other minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly toward us ;
a moment more, and then, with colors flying and a grand
crash of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen
emerged from the dust and came down the street on a gentle
trot. After them came a long line of artillery ; then more
cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their Imperial Ma
jesties Napoleon III. and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse
of people swung their hats and shouted — the windows and
house-tops in the wide vicinity burst into a snow-storm of
waving handkerchiefs, and the wavers of the same mingled
their cheers with those of the masses below. It was a stirring
spectacle.
But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was
ever such a contrast set up before a multitude till then ? Na
poleon, in military uniform — a long-bodied, short-legged man,
fiercely moustached, old, wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and
such a deep, crafty, scheming expression about them ! — Na
poleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud plaudits, and watch
ing every thing and every body with his cat-eyes from under
his depressed hat-brim, as if to discover any sign that those
cheers were not heartfelt and cordial.
126
NAPOLEON III.
NAPOLEON III.
Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman Empire, —
clad in dark green
European clothes,
almost without or
nament or insignia
of rank; a red
Turkish fez on his
head — a short, stout,
dark man, black-
bearded, black-
eyed, stupid, unpre
possessing — a man
whose whole ap
pearance somehow
suggested that if he
only had a cleaver
in his hand and a
white apron on, one
would not be at all surprised to hear him say : "A mutton-
roast to-day, or will
you have a nice
porter-house steak ?"
Napoleon III.,
the representative
of the highest mod
ern civilization, pro
gress, and refine
ment; Abdul-Aziz,
•the representative
of a people by na
ture and training
filthy, brutish, ig
norant, unprogress-
ive, superstitious —
and a government
whose Three Graces
Here in brilliant Paris, under
ABDUL AZIZ.
are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood.
NAPOLEON III. 127
this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century greets the
Nineteenth !
NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France ! Surrounded by shout
ing thousands, by military pomp, by the splendors of his
capital city, and companioned by kings and princes — this is
the man who was sneered at, and reviled, and called Bastard
— yet who was dreaming of a crown and an Empire all the
while ; who was driven into exile — but carried his dreams
with him ; who associated with the common herd in America,
and ran foot-races for a wager — but still sat upon a throne, in
fancy ; who braved every danger to go to his dying mother —
and grieved that she could not be spared to see him cast aside
his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty ; who kept
his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common po
liceman of London — but dreamed the while of a coming
night when he should tread the long-drawn corridors of the
Tuileries ; who made the miserable fiasco of Strasbourg ; saw
his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse to perch
upon his shoulder ; delivered his carefully-prepared, senten
tious burst of eloquence, unto unsympathetic ears ; found him
self a prisoner, the butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless
ridicule of all the world — yet went on dreaming of corona
tions and splendid pageants, as before ; who lay a forgotten
captive in the dungeons of Ham — and still schemed and
planned and pondered over future glory and future power;
President of France at last! a coup d'etat, and surrounded by
applauding armies, welcomed by the thunders of cannon, he
mounts a throne and waves before an astounded world the
sceptre of a mighty Empire ! Who talks of the marvels of
fiction? Who speaks of the wonders of romance? Who
prates of the tame achievements of Aladdin and the Magii of
Arabia ?
ABDUL- Aziz, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Em
pire ! Born to a throne ; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as
his meanest slave ; chief of a vast royalty, yet the puppet of
his Premier and the obedient child of a tyrannical mother ; a
man who sits upon a throne — the beck of whose finger moves
128 THE SULTAN OF TURKEY.
navies and armies — who holds in his hands the power of life
and death over millions — yet. who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats,
idles with his eight hundred concubines, and when he is sur
feited with eating and sleeping and idling, and would rouse
up and take the reins of government and threaten to be a Sul
tan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad Pacha with a
pretty plan for a new palace or a new ship — charmed away
with a new toy, like any other restless child ; a man who sees
his people robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but
speaks no word to save them ; who believes in gnomes, and
genii and the wild fables of the Arabian lights, but has
small regard for the mighty magicians of to-day, and is ner
vous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and steam
boats and telegraphs ; who would see undone in Egypt all
that great Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to
forget than emulate him ; a man who found his great Empire a
blot upon the earth — a degraded, poverty-stricken, miserable,
infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime, and brutality,
and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life, and then
pass to the dust and the worms and leave it so !
Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of
France, in ten years, to such a degree that figures can hardly
compute it. He has rebuilt Paris, and has partly rebuilt
every city in the State. He condemns a whole street at a
time, assesses the damages, pays them and rebuilds superbly.
Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original
owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated
price before the speculator is permitted to purchase. But
above all things, he has taken the sole control of the Empire
of France into his hands, and made it a tolerably free land —
for people who will not attempt to go too far in medding with
government affairs. No country offers greater security to life
and property than France, and one has all the freedom he
wants, but no license — no license to interfere with any body,
or make any one uncomfortable.
As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch
a dozen abler men in a night.
THE REVIEW. — CANROBERT.
129
The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napo
leon III., the genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise ; and
the feeble Abdul- Aziz, the genius of Ignorance, Bigotry and
Indolence, prepared for the Forward — March !
"We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached
old Crimean soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw —
well, we saw every thing, and then we went home satisfied.
OHAPTEE XIV.
~TTT~E went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. — We had
VV heard of it before. It surprises me, sometimes, to
think how much we do know, and how intelligent we are.
We recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment ; it was
like the pictures. We stood at a little distance and changed
from one point of observation to another, and gazed long at
its lofty square towers and its rich front, clustered thick with
stony,- mutilated saints who had been looking calmly down
from their perches for ages. The Patriarch of Jerusalem stood
under them in the old days of chivalry and romance, and
preached the third Crusade, more than six hundred years ago ;
and since that day they have stood there and looked quietly
down upon the most thrilling scenes, the grandest pageants,
the most extraordinary spectacles that have grieved or de
lighted Paris. These battered and broken-nosed old fellows
saw many and many a cavalcade of mail-clad knights come
marching- home from Holy Land ; they heard the bells above
them toll the signal for the St. Bartholomew's Massacre, and
they saw the slaughter that followed ; later, they saw the
Reign of Terror, the carnage of the Revolution, the overthrow
of a king, the coronation of two Napoleons, the christening of
the young prince that lords it over a regiment of servants in
the Tuileries to-day — and they may possibly continue to stand
there until they see the Napoleon dynasty swept away and the
banners of a great Republic floating above its ruins. I wish
these old parties could speak. They could tell a tale worth
the listening to.
They say that a pagan temple stood where Notre Dame now
JEAN SANS-PEUR'S ADDITION. 131
stands, in the old Roman days, eighteen or twenty centuries
ago — remains of it are still preserved in Paris ; and that a
Christian church took its place about A. D. 300 ; another took
the place of that in A. D. 500 ; and that the foundations of the
present Cathedral were laid about A. D. 1100. The ground
ought to be measurably sacred l>y this time, one would think.
One portion of this noble old edifice is suggestive of the quaint
fashions of ancient times. It was built by Jean Sans-Peur,
Duke of Burgundy, to set his conscience at rest — he had as
sassinated the Duke of Orleans. Alas ! those good old times
are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name
and soothe his troubles to sleep simply by getting out his bricks
ajid mortar and building an addition to a church.
The portals of the great western front are bisected by square
pillars. They took the central one away, in 1852, on the oc
casion of thanksgivings for the reinstitution of the Presiden
tial power — but precious soon they had occasion to reconsider
that motion and put it back again ! And they did.
We loitered through the grand aisles for an hour or two,
staring up at the rich stained glass windows embellished with
blue and yellow and crimson saints and martyrs, and trying
to admire the numberless great pictures in the chapels, and
then we were admitted to the sacristy and show^n the magnifi
cent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned Napoleon
I.; a wagon-load of solid gold and silver utensils used in the
great public processions and ceremonies of the church ; some
nails of the true cross, a fragment of the cross itself, a part of
the crown of thorns. "We had already seen a large piece of the
true cross in a church in the Azores, but no nails. They
showed us likewise the bloody robe which that Archbishop of
Paris wore who exposed his sacred person and braved the
wrath of the insurgents of 1848, to mount the barricades and
hold aloft the olive branch of peace in the hope of stopping
the slaughter. His noble effort cost him his life. He was
shot dead. They showed us a cast of his face, taken after
death, the bullet that killed him, and the two vertebrae in
which it lodged. These people have a somewhat singular
132
THE MORGUE.
taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that the
silver cross which the good Archbishop wore at his girdle was
seized and thrown into the Seine, where it lay embedded in
the mud for fifteen years, and then an angel appeared to a
priest and told him where to dive for it ; he did dive for it and
got it, and now it is there on exhibition at Notre Dame, to be
inspected by any body wrho feels an interest in inanimate ob
jects of miraculous intervention.
Next we went
to visit the
Morgue, that
horrible recep-
tacle for the
dead who die
mysteriously
and leave the
• 1 1 1 1 i ^^BHWHiBi manner of their
taking off a
dismal secret.
We stood be-
THE MORGUE. fore a grating
and looked
through into a room which was hung all about with the
clothing of dead men ; coarse blouses, water-soaked ; the deli
cate garments of women and children ; patrician vestments,
THE MORGUE. 133
hacked and stabbed and stained with red ; a hat that was
crushed and bloody. On a slanting stone lay a drowned
man, naked, swollen, purple ; clasping the fragment of a bro
ken bush with a grip which death had so petrified that human
strength could not unloose it — mute witness of the last despair
ing effort to save the life that was doomed beyond all help. A
stream of water trickled ceaselessly over the hideous face. We
knew that the body and the clothing were there for identifica
tion by friends, but still we wondered if any body could love that
repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew medita
tive and wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother
of that ghastly thing was dandling it upon her knee, and kiss
ing it and petting it and displaying it with satisfied pride to
the passers-by, a prophetic vision of this dread ending ever
fiitted through her brain. I half feared that the mother, or the
wife or a brother of the dead man might come while we stood
there, but nothing of the kind occurred. Men and women
came, and some looked eagerly in, and pressed their faces
against the bars ; others glanced carelessly at the body, and
turned away with a disappointed look — people, I thought, who
live upon strong excitements, and who attend the exhibitions
of the Morgue regularly, just as other people go to see thea
trical spectacles every night. When one of these looked in and
passed on, I could not help thinking —
" Now this don't afford you any satisfaction — a party with
his head shot off is what you need."
One nteht we went to the celebrated Jardin Mabille. but
» O ^
only staid a little while. We wanted to see some of this kind
of Paris life, however, and therefore, the next night we wrent
to a similar place of entertainment in a great garden in the
suburb of Asnie'res. We went to the railroad depot, toward
evening, and Ferguson got tickets for a second-class carriage.
Such a perfect jam of people I have not often seen — but there
was no noise, no disorder, no rowdyism. Some of the women
and young girls that entered the train we knew to be of the
demi-monde, but others we were not at all sure about.
The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves
134 BALAAM'S FRIEND SPEAKS.
modestly and becomingly, all the way out, except that they
smoked. "When we arrived at the garden in Asnieres, we paid
a franc or two admission, and entered a place which had flowT-
er-beds in it, and grass plats, and long, curving rows of orna
mental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower con
venient for eating ice-cream in. We moved along the sinuous
gravel walks, with the great concourse of girls and young men,
and suddenly a domed and filagreed white temple, starred
over and over and over again with brilliant gas-jets, burst upon
us like a fallen sun. Near by was a large, handsome house
with its ample front illuminated in the same way, and above
its roof floated the Star Spangled Banner of America.
" Well !" I said. " How is this ?" It nearly took my breath
away.
Ferguson said an American — a New Yorker — kept the
place, and was carrying on quite a stirring opposition to the
Jardin Mdbille.
Crowds, composed of both sexes and nearly all ages, were
frisking about the garden or sitting in the open air in front of
the flag-staff and the temple, drinking wine and coffee, or
smoking. The dancing had not begun, yet. Ferguson said
there was to be an exhibition. The famous Blondin was going
to perform on a tight-rope in another part of the garden. We
went thither. Here the light was dim, and the masses of peo
ple were pretty closely packed together. And now I made a
mistake which any donkey might make, but a sensible man
never. I committed an error which I find myself repeating
every day of my life. — Standing right before a young lady, I
said —
" Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is !"
" I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compli
ment, sir, than for the extraordinary publicity you have given
;to it !" This in good, pure English.
We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly damp
ened. I did not feel right comfortable for some time after
ward. Why will people be so stupid as to suppose themselves
the only .foreigners among a crowd of ten thousand persons?
BLONDIN IN A FLAME.
135
But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched
cable, far away above the sea of tossing hats and handker
chiefs, and in the glare of the hundreds of rockets that whizzed
heavenward by him he looked like a wee insect. He balanced
WE TOOK A WALK.
his pole and walked the length of his rope — two or three hun
dred feet; he came back and got a man and carried him
across ; he returned to the centre and danced a jig ; next he
performed some gymnastic and balancing feats too perilous to
afford a pleasant spectacle ; and he finished by fastening to his
person a thousand Roman candles, Catherine wheels, serpents
and rockets of all manner of brilliant colors, setting them on
fire all at once and walking and waltzing across his rope again
in a blinding blaze of glory that lit up the garden and the
people's faces like a great conflagration at midnight.
The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple.
Within it was a drinking saloon ; and all around it was a
136
THE OUTRAGEOUS "CAN-CAN."
broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed up against
the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty sets formed, the
music struck up, and then — I placed my hands before my face
for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They
were dancing the renowned " Can
can" A handsome girl in the
set before me tripped forward
lightly to meet the opposite gen
tleman — tripped back again,
grasped her dresses vigorously
on both sides with her hands,
raised them pretty high, danced
an extraordinary jig that had
more activity and exposure about
it than any jig I ever saw before,
and then, drawing her clothes
still higher, she advanced gaily
to the centre and launched a vi
cious kick full at her vis-a-vis that
must infallibly have removed his
nose if he had been seven feet
high. It was a mercy he was
only six.
That is the can-can. The idea
of it is to dance as wildly, as
noisily, as furiously as you can ;
expose yourself as much as possible if you are a woman ; and
kick as high as you can, no matter which sex you belong to.
There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid,
respectable, aged people who were there that night can testify
to the truth of that statement. There were a good many such
people present. I suppose French morality is not of that
straight-laced description which is shocked at trifles.
I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can.
Shouts, laughter, furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting
and intermingling forms, stormy jerking and snatching of gay
dresses, bobbing heads, flying arms, lightning-flashes of white-
CAN-CAN.
THE LOWER PALACE. 137
stockinged calves and dainty slippers in the air, and then a
grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub and a wild stampede !
Heavens ! Nothing like it has been seen on earth since
trembling Tana O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches at
their orgies that stormy night in " Alloway's auld haunted
kirk."
We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk pur
chases in view, and looked at its miles of paintings by the old
masters. Some of them were beautiful, but at the same time
they carried such evidences about them of the cringing spirit
of those great men that we found small pleasure in examining
them. Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons was more
prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than
the charms of color and expression which are claimed to be
in the pictures. Gratitude for kindnesses is well, but it seems
to me that some of those artists carried it so far that it ceased
to be gratitude, and became worship. If there is a plausible
excuse for the worship of men, then by all means let us forgive
Rubens and his brethren.
But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the
old masters that might as well be left unsaid.
Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless
park, with its forests, its lakes, its cascades, and its broad ave
nues. There were thousands upon thousands of vehicles
abroad, and the scene was full of life and gayety. • There were
very common hacks, with father and mother and all the chil
dren in them ; conspicuous little open carriages with celebrated
ladies of questionable reputation in them ; there were Dukes and
Duchesses abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and
equally gorgeous outriders perched on each of the six horses ;
there were blue and silver, and green and gold, and pink and
black, and all sorts and descriptions of stunning and startling
liveries out, and I almost yearned to be a flunkey myself, for
the sake of the fine clothes.
But presently the Emperor came along and he out-shone
them all. He was preceded by a body guard of gentlemen on
horseback in showy uniforms, his carriage-horses (there ap-
138 RESERVATION OF NOTED THINGS.
peared to be somewhere in the remote neighborhood of a thou
sand of them,) were bestridden by gallant looking fellows, also
in stylish uniforms, and after the carriage followed another de
tachment of body-guards. Every body got out of the way;
every body bowed to the Emperor and his friend the Sultan,
and they went by on a swinging trot and disappeared.
I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I can not do it.
It is simply a beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilder
ness. It is an enchanting place. It is in Paris, now, one may
say, but a crumbling old cross in one portion of it reminds one
that it was not always so. The cross marks the spot where a
celebrated troubadour was waylaid and murdered in the four
teenth century. It was in this park that that fellow with an
unpronounceable name made the attempt upon the Russian
Czar's life last spring with a pistol. The bullet struck a tree.
Ferguson showed us the place. Now in America that inter
esting tree would be chopped down or forgotten within the
next live years, but it will be treasured here. The guides will
point it out to visitors for the next eight hundred years, and
when it decays and falls down they will put up another there
and go on with the same old story just the same.
CHAPTER XT.
ONE of our pleasantest visits was to Pere la Chaise, the
national bury ing-ground of France, the honored resting-
place of some of her greatest and best children, the last home
of scores of illustrious men and women who were born to no
titles, but achieved fame by their own energy and their own
genius. It is a solemn city of winding streets, and of minia
ture marble temples and mansions of the dead gleaming white
from out a wilderness of foliage and fresh flowers. Not every
city is so well peopled as this, or has so ample an area within
its walls. Few palaces exist in any city, that are so exquisite
in design, so rich in art, so costly in material, so graceful, so
beautiful.
We had stood in the ancient church of St. Denis, where
the marble effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens
lay stretched at length upon the tombs, and the sensations
invoked were startling and novel ; the curious armor, the ob
solete costumes, the placid faces, the hands placed palm to
palm in eloquent supplication — it was a vision of gray anti
quity. It seemed curious enough to be standing face to face, as
it were, with old Dagobert I., and Clovis and Charlemagne,
those vague, colossal heroes, those shadows, those myths of a
thousand years ago ! I touched their dust-covered faces with
my finger, but Dagobert was deader than the sixteen centu
ries that have passed over him, Clovis slept well after his
labor for Christ, and old Charlemagne went on dreaming of
his paladins, of bloody Koncesvalles, and gave no heed to
me.
14:0 AMONG THE GREAT DEAD.
The great names of Pere la Chaise impress one, too, but
differently. There the suggestion brought constantly to his
mind is, that this place is sacred to a nobler royalty — the roy
alty of heart and brain. Every faculty of mind, every noble
trait of human nature, every high occupation which men
engage in seems represented by a famous name. The effect is
a curious medley. Davoust and Massena, who wrought in
many a battle-tragedy, are here, and so also is Eachel, of equal
renown in mimic tragedy on the stage. The Abbe Sicard
sleeps here — the first great teacher of the deaf and dumb — a
man whose heart went out to every unfortunate, and whose
life was given to kindly offices in their service ; and not far
off, in repose and peace at last, lies Marshal Ney, whose
stormy spirit knew no music like the bugle call to arms. The
man who originated public gas-lighting, and that other bene
factor who introduced the cultivation of the potato and thus
blessed millions of his starving countrymen, lie with the
Prince of Masserano, arid with exiled queens and princes of
Further India. Gay-Lussac the chemist, Laplace the astron
omer, Larrey the surgeon, de Seze the advocate, are here, and
with them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini ; de Balzac, Beaumar-
chais, Beranger ; Moliere and Lafontaine, and scores of other
men whose names and whose worthy labors are as familiar in
the remote by-places of civilization as are the historic deeds
of the kings and princes that sleep in the marble vaults of St.
Denis.
But among the thousands and thousands of tombs in Pere
la Chaise, there is one that no man, no woman, no youth of
either sex, ever passes by without stopping to examine.
Every visitor has a sort of indistinct idea of the history of its
dead, and comprehends that homage is due there, but not one
in twenty thousand clearly remembers the story of that tomb
and its romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard
and Heloise — a grave which has been more revered, more
widely known, more written and sung about and wept over,
for seven hundred years, than any other in Christendom, save
only that of the Saviour. All visitors linger pensively about
THE SHRINE OF DISAPPOINTED LOVE.
141
it ; all young people capture and carry away keepsakes and
mementoes of it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are
disappointed in love come there to bail out when they are full
of tears ; yea, many stricken lovers make pilgrimages 'to this
shrine from distant provinces to weep and wail and "grit"
their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the sym
pathies of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of
immortelles and budding flowers.
Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that
tomb. Go when you will, you find it furnished with those
GRAVE OF ABELARD AND HELOISE.
bouquets and immortelles. Go when you will, you find a
gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to supply the deficiencies
caused by memento-cabbaging vandals whose affections have
miscarried.
Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise ?
Precious few people. The names are perfectly familiar to
every body, and that is about all. With infinite pains I have
acquired a knowledge of that history, and I propose to narrate
it here, partly for the honest information of the public and
partly to show that public that they have been wasting a good
deal of marketable sentiment very unnecessarily.
STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE.
Heloise was born seven hundred and sixty-six years ago.
142 THE STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE.
She may have had parents. There is no telling. She lived
with her uncle Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral of Paris. I
do not know what a canon of a cathedral is, but that is what
he was. He was nothing more than a sort of a mountain how
itzer, likely, because they had no heavy artillery in those days.
Suffice it, then, that Heloise lived with her uncle the howitzer,
and was happy. — She
spent the most of her
childhood in the con
vent of Argenteuil —
never heard of Ar
genteuil before, but
suppose there was
really such a place.
She then returned to
her uncle, the old
gun, or son of a gun,
as the case may be,
and he taught her to
write and speak Lat
in, which was the
language of literature and polite society at that period.
Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made
himself widely famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school
of rhetoric in Paris. The originality of his principles, his
eloquence, and his great physical strength and beauty created
a profound sensation. He saw Heloise, and was captivated by
her blooming youth, her beauty and her charming disposition,
lie wrote to her ; she answered. He wrote again, she answered
again. He was now in love. He longed to know her — to
speak to her face to face.
His school was near Fulbert's house. He asked Fulbert to
allow him to call. The good old swivel saw here a rare op
portunity : his niece, whom he so much loved, would absorb
knowledge from this man, and it would not cost him a cent.
Such was Fulbert — penurious.
Fulbert's first name is not mentioned by any author, which
A PAIR OF CANONS, 13TH CENTURY.
VILLAINY. 143
is unfortunate. However, George W. Fulbert will answer for
him as well as any other. We will let him go at that. He
asked Abelard to teach her.
Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came
often and staid long. A letter of his shows in its very first
sentence that he came under that friendly roof like a cold-
hearted villain as he was, with the deliberate intention of
debauching a confiding, innocent girl. This is the letter :
" I can not cease to be astonished at the simplicity of Fulbert ; I was as much
surprised as if he had placed a lamb in the power of a hungry wolf. Heloise and
I, under pretext of study, gave ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude that
love seeks our studies procured for us. Books were open before us, but we spoke
oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more readily from our lips than
words."
And so, exulting over an honorable confidence wrhich to his
degraded instinct was a ludicrous " simplicity," this unmanly
Abelard seduced the niece of the man whose guest he was.
Paris found it out. Fulbert was told of it — told often — but
refused to believe it. He could not comprehend how a man
could be so depraved as to use the sacred protection and
security of hospitality as a means for the commission of such
a crime as that. But when he heard the rowdies in the streets
singing the love-songs of Abelard to Heloise, the case was too
plain — love-songs come not properly within the teachings of
rhetoric and philosophy.
He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard returned
secretly and carried Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his
native country. Here, shortly afterward, she bore a son, who,
from his rare beauty, was surnamed Astrolabe — William G.
The girl's flight enraged Fulbert, and he longed for vengeance,
but feared to strike lest retaliation visit Heloise — for he still
loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry
Heloise — but on a shameful condition : that the marriage
should be kept secret from the world, to the end that (while
her good name remained a wreck, as before,) his priestly repu
tation might be kept untarnished. It was like that miscreant.
Fulbert saw his opportunity and consented. He would see
144
THE MARRIAGE.
the parties married, and then violate the confidence of the
man who had taught him that trick ; he would divulge the
secret and so remove somewhat of the obloquy that attached
to his niece's fame. But the niece suspected his scheme. She
refused the marriage, at first ; she said Fulbert would betray
the secret to save her, and besides, she did not wish to drag
down a lover who was so gifted, so honored by the world, and
who had such a splendid career before him. It was noble,
self-sacrificing love, and characteristic of the pure-souled
Heloise, but it was not good sense.
But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place.
Now for Fulbert ! The heart so wounded should be healed at
THE PRIVATE MARRIAGE.
last ; the proud spirit so tortured should find rest again ; the
humbled head should be lifted up once more. He pro
claimed the marriage in the high places of the city, and re
joiced that dishonor had departed from his house. But lo !
Abelard denied the marriage ! Heloise denied it ! The
people, knowing the former circumstances, might have be
lieved Fulbert, had only Abelard denied it, but when the per
son chiefly interested — the girl herself — denied it, they laughed
despairing Fulbert to scorn.
LOVE AND INDIFFERENCE. U5
The poor canon of the cathedral of Paris was spiked again.
The last hope of repairing the wrong that had been done his
house was gone. What next ? Human nature suggested re
venge. He compassed it. The historian says :
" Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and inflicted upon him
a terrible and nameless mutilation."
I am seeking the last resting-place of those "ruffians."
When I find it I shall shed some tears on it, and stack up
some bouquets and immortelles, and cart away from it some
gravel whereby to remember that howsoever blotted by
crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did one just
deed, at any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict
letter of the law.
Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world
and its pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never
heard of Abelard — never even heard his name mentioned.
She had become prioress of Argenteuil, and led a life of com
plete seclusion. She happened one day to see a letter written
by him, in which he narrated his own history. She cried over
it, and wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his " sis
ter in Christ." They continued to correspond, she in the un-
weighed language of unwavering affection, he in the chilly
phraseology of the polished rhetorician. She poured out her
heart in passionate, disjointed sentences; he replied with
finished essays, divided deliberately into heads and sub-heads,
premises and argument. She showered upon him the tender-
est epithets that love could devise, he addressed her from the
North Pole of his frozen heart as the " Spouse of Christ !"
The abandoned villain !
On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some
disreputable irregularities were discovered among them, and
the Abbot of St. Denis broke up her establishment. Abelard
was the official head of the monastery of St. Gildas de Ruys,
at that time, and when he heard of her homeless condition a
sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a wonder the
unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed
10
146 KETRIBUTION.
her and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a re-
ligious establishment which he had founded. She had many
privations and sufferings to undergo at first, but her worth
and her gentle disposition won influential friends for her, and
she built up a wealthy and flourishing nunnery. She became
a great favorite with the heads of the church, and also the
people, though she seldom appeared in public. She rapidly
advanced in esteem, in good report and in usefulness, and
Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her
that he made her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of
splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his time,
became timid, irresolute, and distrustful of his powers. He
only needed a great misfortune to topple him from the high
position he held in the world of intellectual excellence, and it
came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle St.
Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence
of a royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist
had finished he looked about him, and stammered a com
mencement ; but his courage failed him, the cunning of his
tongue was gone : with his speech unspoken, he trembled and
sat down, a disgraced and vanquished champion.
He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, A. D., 1144.
They removed his body to the Paraclete afterward, and when
Heloise died, twenty years later, they buried her with him,
in accordance with her last wish. He died at the ripe age of
± o
64, and she at 63. After the bodies had remained entombed
three hundred years, they were removed once more. They
were removed again in 1800, and finally, seventeen years after
ward, they were taken up and transferred to Pere la Chaise,
where they will remain in peace and quiet until it comes time
for them to get up and move again.
History is silent concerning the last acts of the mountain
howitzer. Let the world say what it will about him, /, at
least, shall always respect the memory and sorrow for the
abused trust, and the broken heart, and the troubled spirit of
the old smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his !
Such is the story of Abelard and Heloise. Such is the his-
"ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE." 147
tory that Lamartine lias shed such cataracts of tears over.
But that man never could come within the influence of a sub
ject in the least pathetic without overflowing his banks. He
ought to be dammed — or leveed, I should more properly say.
Such is the history — not as it is usually told, but as it is when
stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that would enshrine
for our loving worship a dastardly seducer like Pierre Abelard.
I have not a word to say against the misused, faithful girl, and
would not withhold from her grave a single one of those
simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to
her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not time and
opportunity to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her
friend the founder of the Parachute, or the Paraclete, or what
ever it was.
The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled
humbug, in my ignorance ! I shall throttle down my emo
tions hereafter, about this sort of people, until I have read
them up and know whether they are entitled to any tearful
attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles back, now,
and that bunch of radishes.
In Paris we often saw in shop windows the sign, " English
Spoken Here" just as one sees in the windows at home the
sign, " Id on park francaise" We always invaded these places
at once — and invariably received the information, framed in
faultless French, that the clerk who did the English for the
establishment had just gone to dinner and would be back in
an hour — would Monsieur buy something? We wondered
why those parties happened to take their dinners at such
erratic and extraordinary hours, for we never calle'd at a time
when an exemplary Christian would be in the least likely to
be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it was a base
fraud — a snare to trap the unwary — chaff to catch fledglings
with. They had no English-murdering clerk. They trusted
to the sign to inveigle foreigners into their lairs, and trusted
to their own blandishments to keep them there till they bought
something.
We ferreted out another French imposition — a frequent
148
sign to this effect : " ALL MANNER OF AMERICAN DRINKS
ARTISTICALLY PREPARED HERE." We procured the services
of a gentleman experienced in the nomenclature of the Amer
ican bar, and moved upon the works of one of these impos
tors. A bowing, aproned Frenchman skipped forward and
said:
"Que voulez les messieurs?" I do not know what Que
voulez les messieurs means, but such was his remark.
Our General said, " We will take a whisky-straight."
[A stare from the Frenchman.]
AMERICAN DRINKS.
" Well, if you don't know what that is, give us a cham
pagne cock-tail."
[A stare and a shrug.]
ROYAL HONORS TO A YANKEE. 149
" Well, then, give us a sherry cobbler."
The Frenchman was checkmated. This was all Greek to
him.
" Give us a brandy smash !"
The Frenchman began to back away, suspicious of the
ominous vigor of the last order — began to back away, shrug
ging his shoulders and spreading his hands apologetically.
The General followed him up and gained a complete victory.
The uneducated foreigner could not even furnish a Santa
Cruz Punch, an Eye-Opener, a Stone-Fence, or an Earth
quake. It was plain that he was a wicked impostor.
An acquaintance of mine said, the other day, that he was
doubtless the only American visitor to the Exposition who had
had the high honor of being escorted by the Emperor's body
guard. I said with unobtrusive frankness that I was aston
ished that such a long-legged, lantern-jawed, unprepossessing
looking spectre as he should be singled out for a distinction
like that, and asked how it came about. He said he had at
tended a great military review in the Champ de Mars, some
time ago, and while the multitude about him was growing
thicker and thicker every moment, he observed an open space
inside the railing. He left his carriage and went into it. He
was the only person there, and so he had plenty of room, and
the situation being central, he could see .all the preparations
going on about the field. By and by there was a sound of
music, and soon the Emperor of the French and the Emperor
of Austria, escorted by the famous Cent Gardes, entered the
inclosure. They seemed not to observe him, but directly, in
response to a sign from the commander of the Guard, a young
lieutenant came toward him with a file of his men following,
halted, raised his hand and gave the military salute, and
then said in a low voice that he was sorry to have to disturb
a stranger and a gentleman, but the place was sacred to roy
alty. Then this New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and
begged pardon, then with the officer beside him, the file of
men marching behind him, and with, every mark of re
spect, he was escorted to his carriage, by the imperial Cent
150
THE OVER-ESTIMATED GRISETTE.
ROYAL HONORS TO A YANKEE.
Gardes! The officer sainted again and fell back, the New
Jersey sprite bowed in return and had presence of mind
enough to pretend that he had
simply called on a matter of
private business with those em
perors, and so waved them an
adieu, and drove from the
field!
Imagine a poor Frenchman
ignorantly intruding upon a
public rostrum sacred to some
six-penny dignitary in America.
The police would scare him to
death, first, with a storm of
their elegant blasphemy, and
then pull him to pieces getting
him away from there. We are
measurably superior to the
JFrench in some things, but they are immeasurably our bet
ters in others.
Enough of Paris for the present. We have done our whole
duty by it We have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon
Column, .the Madeleine, that wonder of wonders the tomb of
Napoleon, all the great churches and museums, libraries, im
perial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the Pan
theon, Jardm des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the Legislative
JBody, the billiard-rooms, the barbers, the grisettes —
Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are an
other romantic fraud. They were (if you let the books of
travel tell it,) always so beautiful — so neat and trim, so grace-
i'uL — so naive and trusting — so gentle, so winning — so faithful
to their shop duties, so irresistible to buyers in their prattling
importunity — so devoted to their poverty-stricken students of
the Latin Quarter — so light hearted and happy on their Sun
day picnics in the suburbs — and oh, so charmingly, so delight
fully immoral !
.Stuff! .For three or Jhur days I was constantly saying:
THE OVER-ESTIMATED GRISETTE.
151
" Quick, Ferguson ! is that a grisette?"
And lie always said " No."
He comprehended, at last, that I wanted to see a grisette.
Then he showed me dozens of them. They were like nearly
all the Frenchwomen I ever saw — homely. They had large
hands, large feet, large mouths ; they had pug noses as a gen
eral thing, and mustaches that not even good breeding could
overlook ; they combed their hair straight back without part
ing; they were ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were
not graceful ; I knew
by their looks that
they ate garlic and
onions ; and lastly and
finally, to my think
ing it would be base
flattery to call them
immoral.
Aroint thee, wench !
I sorrow for the vaga
bond student of the
Latin Quarter now,
even more than for
merly I envied him.
Thus topples to earth
another idol of my in
fancy.
We have seen every
thing, and to-morrow
we go to Versailles.
We shall see Paris
only for a little while
as we come back to
take up our line of march for the ship, and "so I may
as well bid the beautiful city a regretful farewell. We shall
travel many thousands of miles after we leave here, and visit
many great cities, but we shall find none so enchanting as
this.
GRISETTE
152 A DELIBERATE OPINION.
Some of our party have gone to England, intending to take
a roundabout course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or
Naples, several weeks hence. "We came near going to Geneva,
but have concluded to return to Marseilles and go up through
Italy from Genoa.
I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sin
cerely proud to be able to make — and glad, as well, that my
comrades cordially indorse it, to wit : by far the handsomest
women we have seen in France were born and reared in
America.
I feel, now, like a man who has redeemed a failing reputa
tion and shed lustre upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single
just deed done at the eleventh hour.
Let the curtain fall, to slow music.
CHAPTEE XVI.
"YTEKSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful ! You gaze,
V and stare, and try to understand that it is real, that it
is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden — but your
brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around
you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite
dream. The scene thrills one like military music ! A noble
palace, stretching its ornamented front block upon block away,
till it seemed that it would never end; a grand promenade
before it, whereon the armies of an empire might parade ; all
about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal statues that were
almost numberless, and yet seemed only scattered over the
ample space ; broad flights of stone steps leading down from
the promenade to lower grounds of the park — stairways that
whole regiments might stand to arms upon and have room to
spare ; vast fountains whose great bronze effigies discharged
rivers of sparkling water into the air and mingled a hundred
curving jets together in forms of matchless beauty ; wide grass-
carpeted avenues that branched hither and thither in every
direction and wandered to seemingly interminable distances,
walled all the way on either side with compact ranks of leafy
trees whose branches met above and formed arches as faultless
and as symmetrical as ever were carved in stone ; and here
and there were glimpses of sylvan lakes with miniature ships
glassed in their surfaces. And every where — on the palace
steps, and the great promenade, around the fountains, among
the trees, and far under the arches of the endless avenues, hun-
154
A WONDERFUL PARK.
dreds and hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran
or danced, and gave to the fairy picture the life and animation
which was all of perfection it could have lacked.
It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Every thing is on so
gigantic a scale. Nothing is small — nothing is cheap. The
statues are all large ; the palace is grand ; the park covers a
fair-sized county ; the avenues are interminable. All the
distances and all the dimensions about Versailles are vast. I
JfOUXTAIX AT
used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and
these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Ver
sailles more beautiful than it was possible for any place in the
world to be. I know now that the pictures never came up to
the subject in any respect, and that no painter could represent
Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it is in reality. I used to
abuse Louis XIV. for spending two hundred millions of dollars
in creating this marvelous park, when bread was so scarce
A WONDERFUL PARK. 155
with some of his subjects ; but I have forgiven him now. He
took a tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to
work to make this park and build this palace and a road to it
from Paris. He kept 36,000 men employed daily on it, and
the labor was so unhealthy that they used to die and be hauled
off by cart-loads every night. The wife of a nobleman of the
time speaks of this as an " inconvenience" but naively remarks
that " it does not seem worthy of attention in the happy state
of tranquillity we now enjoy."
I always thought ill of people at home, who trimmed their
shrubbery into pyramids, and squares, and spires, and all
manner of unnatural shapes, and when I saw the same thing
being practiced in this great park I began to feel dissatisfied.
But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it.
They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees
into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a
dining-room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But
here they take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set
them in a double row ; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow
on the trunk lower down than six feet above the ground ;
from that point the boughs begin to project, and very grad
ually they extend outward further and further till they meet
overhead, and a faultless tunnel of foliage is formed. The arch
is mathematically precise. The effect is then very fine. They
make trees take fifty different shapes, and so these quaint effects
are infinitely varied and picturesque. The trees in no two ave
nues are shaped alike, and consequently the eye is not fatigued
with any thing in the nature of monotonous uniformity. I will
drop this subject now, leaving it to others to determine how
these people manage to make endless ranks of lofty forest
trees grow to just a certain thickness of trunk (say a foot and
two-thirds ;) how they make them spring to precisely the same
height for miles ; how they make them grow so close together ;
how they compel one huge limb to spring from the same
identical spot on each tree and form the main sweep of the
arch ; and how all these things are kept exactly in the same
condition, and in the same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry
156 A WONDERFUL PARK.
month after montli and year after year — for I have tried to
reason out the problem, and have failed.
We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one
hundred and fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Ver
sailles, and felt that to be in such a place was useless unless
one had a whole year at his disposal. These pictures are all
battle-scenes, and only one solitary little canvas among them
all treats of anything but great French victories. We wan
dered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon,
those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so
mournful — filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First,
and three dead Kings and as many Queens. In one sumptu
ous bed they had all slept in succession, but no one occupies it
now. In a large dining-room stood the table at which Louis
XIY. and his mistress, Madame Maintenon, and after them
Louis XY., and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked and
unattended — for the table stood upon a trap-door, which de
scended with it to regions below wrhen it was necessary
to replenish its dishes. In a room of the Petit Trianon stood
the furniture, just as poor Marie Antoinette left it when the
mob came and dragged her and the King to Paris, never to
return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious carriages
that showed no color but gold — carriages used by former Kings
of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a
kingly head is to be crowned, or an imperial infant christened.
And with them were some curious sleighs, whose bodies were
shaped like lions, swans, tigers, etc. — vehicles that had once
been handsome with pictured designs and fine workmanship,
but were dusty and decaying now. They had their history.
When Louis XIY. had finished the Grand Trianon, he told
Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she
could think of any thing now to wish for. He said he wished
the Trianon to be perfection — nothing less. She said she
could think of but one thing — it was summer, and it was
balmy France — yet she would like well to sleigh-ride in the
leafy avenues of Versailles ! The next morning found miles
and miles of grassy avenues spread thick with snowy salt and
PARADISE LOST. 157
sugar, and a procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to
receive the chief concubine of the gayest and most unprinci
pled court that France has ever seen !
From sumptuous Versailles, with its palaces, its statues, its
gardens and its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and
sought its antipodes — the Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, nar
row streets ; dirty children blockading them ; greasy, slovenly
women capturing and spanking them ; filthy dens on first
floors, with rag stores in them (the heaviest business in the
Faubourg is the chiffonier's ;) other filthy dens where whole
suits of second and third-hand clothing are sold at prices that
would ruin any proprietor who did not steal his stock ; still
other filthy dens where they sold groceries — sold them by the
half-pennyworth — five dollars would buy the man out, good
will and all. Up these little crooked streets they will murder
a man for seven dollars and dump the body in the Seine.
And up some other of these streets — most of them, I should
say — live lorettes.
All through this Faubourg St. Antoine, misery, poverty,
vice and crime go hand in hand, and the evidences of it stare
one in the face from every side. Here the people live who
begin the revolutions. "Whenever there is any thing of that
kind to be clone, they are always ready. They take as much
genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in cutting
a throat or shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these savage-
looking ruffians who storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries,
occasionally, and swarm into Versailles when a King is to be
called to account.
But they will build no more barricades, they will break no
more soldiers' heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has
taken care of all that. He is annihilating the crooked streets,
and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an
arrow — avenues which a cannon ball could traverse from end
to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than
the flesh and bones of men — boulevards whose stately edifices
will never afford refuges and plotting-places for starving, dis
contented revolution-breeders. Five of these great thorough-
158 NAPOLEONIC STRATEGY.
fares radiate from one ample centre — a centre which is exceed
ingly well adapted to the accommodation of heavy artillery.
The mobs used to riot there, but they must seek another rally-
ing-place in future. And this ingenious Napoleon paves the
streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition
of asphaltum and sand. ~No more barricades of flag-stones —
no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I can
not feel friendly toward my quondam fellow- American, Napo
leon III., especially at this time,* when in fancy I see his
credulous victim, Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico,
and his maniac widow watching eagerly from her French
asylum for the form that will never come — but I do admire
his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his shrewd good sense.
* July, 1867.
CHAPTEE XVII.
~TTT~E had a pleasant journey of it seaward again. We
* V found that for the three past nights our ship had
been in a state of war. The first night the sailors of a British
ship, being happy with grog, came down on the pier and chal
lenged our sailors to a free fight. They accepted with alac
rity, repaired to the pier and gained — their share of a drawn
battle. Several bruised and bloody members of both parties
were carried off by the police, and imprisoned until the fol
lowing morning. The next night the British boys came again
to renew the fight, but our men had had strict orders to
remain on board and out of sight. They did so, and the
besieging party grew noisy, and more and more abusive as
the fact became apparent (to them,) that our men were afraid
to come out. They went away, finally, with a closing burst
of ridicule and offensive epithets. The third night they came
again, and were more obstreperous than ever. They swag
gered up and down the almost deserted pier, and hurled curses,
obscenity and stinging sarcasms at our crew. It was more
than human nature could bear. The executive officer ordered
our men ashore — with instructions not to fight. They charged
the British and gained a brilliant victory. I probably would
not have mentioned this war had it ended differently. But I
travel to learn, and I still remember that they picture no
French defeats in the battle-galleries of Versailles.
It was like home to us to step on board the comfortable
ship again, and smoke and lounge about her breezy decks.
And yet it was not altogether like home, either, because so
160 "HOME AGAIN."
many members of the family were away. We missed some
pleasant faces which we would rather have found at dinner,
and at night there were gaps in the euchre-parties which could
not be satisfactorily filled. " Moult." was in England, Jack
in Switzerland, Charley in Spain. Blucher was gone, none
could tell where. But we were at sea again, and we had the
stars and the ocean to look at, and plenty of room to meditate
in.
In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we
stood gazing from the decks early in the bright summer morn
ing, the stately city of Genoa rose up out of the sea and flung
back the sunlight from her hundred palaces.
Here we rest, for the present — or rather, here we have been
trying to rest, for some little time, but we run about too much
to accomplish a great deal in that line.
I would like to remain here. I had rather not go any
further. There may be prettier women in Europe, but I
doubt it. The population of Genoa is 120,000 ; two-thirds of
these are women, I think, and at least two-thirds of the
women are beautiful. They are as dressy, and as tasteful and
as graceful as they could possibly be without being angels.
However, angels are not very dressy, I believe. At least the
angels in pictures are not — they wear nothing but wings.
But these Genoese women do look so charming. Most of the
young demoiselles are robed in a cloud of white from head to
foot, though many trick themselves out more elaborately.
Nine-tenths of them wear nothing on their heads but a filmy
sort of veil, which falls down their backs like a white mist.
They are very fair, and many of them have blue eyes, but
black and dreamy dark brown ones are met with oftenest.
The ladies and gentlemen of Genoa have a pleasant fashion
of promenading in a large park on the top of a hill in the
centre of the city, from six till nine in the evening, and then eat
ing ices in a neighboring garden an hour or two longer. We
went to the park on Sunday evening. Two thousand persons
were present, chiefly young ladies and gentlemen. The gen
tlemen were dressed in the very latest Paris fashions, and the
THE HOME OF FEMALE BEAUTY. 161
robes of the ladies glinted among the trees like so many snow-
flakes. The multitude moved round and round the park in a
great procession. The bands played, and so did the fountains ;
the moon and the gas lamps lit up the scene, and altogether it
was a brilliant and an animated picture. I scanned every
female face that passed, and it seemed to me that all were
handsome. I never saw such a freshet of loveliness before.
I do not see how a man of only ordinary decision of character
WOMEN OF GEXOA.
could marry here, because, before he could get his mind made
up he would fall in love with somebody else.
Never smoke any Italian tobacco. Never do it on any
account. It makes me shudder to think what it must be made
of. You can not throw an old cigar " stub " down any where,
but some vagabond will pounce upon it on the instant. I
like to smoke a good deal, but it wounds my sensibilities to
see one of these stub-hunters watching me out of the corners
11
162 AMONG THE PALACES.
of his hungry eyes and calculating how long my cigar will be
likely to last. It reminded me too painfully of that San
Francisco undertaker who used to go to sick-beds with his
watch in his hand and time the corpse. One of these stub-
hunters followed us all over the park last night, and we never
had a smoke that was worth any thing. We were always
moved to appease him with the stub before the cigar was half
gone, because he looked so viciously anxious. He regarded us
as his own legitimate prey, by right of discovery, I think,
because he drove off several other professionals who wanted
to take stock in us.
Now, they surely must chew up those old stubs, and dry
and sell them for smoking-tobacco. Therefore, give your
custom to other than Italian brands of the article.
" The Superb " and the " City of Palaces " are names which
Genoa has held for centuries. She is full of palaces, certainly,
and the palaces are sumptuous inside, but they are very rusty
without, and make no pretensions to architectural magnifi
cence. " Genoa, the Superb," would be a felicitous title if it
referred to the women.
We have visited several of the palaces — immense thick-
walled piles, with great stone staircases, tesselated marble
pavements on the floors, (sometimes they make a mosaic work,
of intricate designs, wrought in pebbles, or little fragments of
marble laid in cement,) and grand salons hung with pictures
by Rubens, Guido, Titian, Paul Veronese, and so on, and
portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and gal
lant coats of mail, and patrician ladies, in stunning costumes
of centuries ago. But, of course, the folks were all out in the
country for the summer, and might not have known enough to
ask us to dinner if they had been at home, and so all the
grand empty salons, with their resounding pavements, their
grim pictures of dead ancestors, and tattered banners with the
dust of bygone centuries upon them, seemed to brood solemnly
of death and the grave, and our spirits ebbed away, and our
cheerfulness passed from us. We never went up to the elev
enth story. We always began to suspect ghosts. There was
AMONG THE PALACES.
163
always an undertaker-looking servant along, too, who handed
us a programme, pointed to the picture that began the list of
the salon he was in, and then stood stiff and stark and unsmil
ing in his petrified livery till we were ready to move on
to the next chamber, where
upon he marched sadly
ahead and took up another
malignantly respectful posi
tion as before. I wasted so
much time praying that the
roof would fall in on these
PETRIFIED LACKEY.
dispiriting flunkeys that I had but little left to bestow upon
palace and pictures.
And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch
all the guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist
in Genoa, as far as English was concerned, and that only two
persons in the city beside himself could talk the language at
all. He showed us the birthplace of Christopher Columbus,
164
CHURCH MAGNIFICENCE.
and after we had reflected in silent awe before it for fifteen
minutes, lie said it was not the birthplace of Columbus, but
of Columbus's grandmother ! When we demanded an expla
nation of his conduct he only shrugged his shoulders and
answered in barbarous Italian. I shall speak further of this
guide in a future chapter. All the information we got out of
him we shall be able to carry along with us, I think.
I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have
in the last few weeks.
The people in these old
lands seem to make
churches their specialty.
Especially does this
seem to be the case with
the citizens of Genoa.
I think there is a church
every three or four hun
dred yards all over town.
The streets are sprinkled
from end to end with
shovel-hatted, long-
robed, well-fed priests,
and the church bells by
dozens are pealing all
the day long, nearly.
Every now and then one
comes across a friar of
orders gray, with shaven
head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads, and with feet
cased in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer in
the flesh, and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look
like consummate famine-breeders. They are all fat and serene.
The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a
building as we have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has
colonnades of noble pillars, and a great organ, and the cus
tomary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures, frescoed ceilings, and
so forth. I can not describe it, of course — it would require a
PRIEST AND FRIAR.
CHURCH MAGNIFICENCE. 165
good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place. They
said that half of it — from the front door half way down to the
altar — was a Jewish Synagogue before the Saviour was born,
and that no alteration had been made in it since that time.
We doubted the statement, but did it reluctantly. We would
much rather have believed it. The place looked in too perfect
repair to be so ancient.
The main point of interest about the Cathedral is the little
Chapel of St. John the Baptist. They only allow \voinen to
enter it on one day in the year, on account of the animosity
they still cherish against the sex because of the murder of the
Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias. In this Chapel is a
marble chest, in which, they told us, were the ashes of St.
John ; and around it was wound a chain, which, they said,
had confined him wrhen he was in prison. We did not desire
to disbelieve these statements, and yet we could not feel cer
tain that they wrere correct — partly because we could have
broken that chain, and so could St. John, and partly because
we had seen St. John's ashes before, in another Church. We
could not bring ourselves to think St. John had two sets of
ashes.
They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which wras
painted by St. Luke, and it did not look half as old and
smoky as some of the pictures by Rubens. We could not help
admiring the Apostle's modesty in never once mentioning in
his writings that he could paint.
But isn't this relic matter a little overdone ? We find a
piece of the true cross in every old church we go into, and
some of the nails that held it together. I would not like to
be positive, but I think we have seen as much as a keg of
these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have
part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one, also,
in Notre Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain
we have seen enough of them to duplicate him, if necessary.
I only meant to write about the churches, but I keep wan
dering from the subject. I could say that the Church of the
Annunciation is a wilderness of beautiful columns, of statues.
166 HOW THEY LIVE.
gilded moldings, and pictures almost countless, but that
would give no one an entirely perfect idea of the thing, and
so where is the use ? One family built the whole edifice, and
have got money left. There is where the mystery lies. We
had an idea at first that only a mint could have survived the
expense.
These people here live in the heaviest, highest, broadest,
darkest, solidest houses one can imagine. Each one might
" laugh a siege to scorn." A hundred feet front and a hun
dred high is about the style, and you go up three flights of
stairs before you begin to come upon signs of occupancy.
Every thing is stone, and stone of the heaviest — floors, stair
ways, mantels, benches — every thing. The walls are four to
five feet thick. The streets generally are four or five to eight
feet wide and as crooked as a corkscrew. You go along one
of these gloomy cracks, and look up and behold the sky like a
mere ribbon of light, far above your head, where the tops of
the tall houses on either side of the street bend almost
together. You feel as if you were at the bottom of some tre
mendous abyss, with all the world far above you. You wind
in and out and here and there, in the most mysterious way,
and have no more idea of the points of the compass than if you
were a blind man. You can never persuade yourself that
these are actually streets, and the frowning, dingy, monstrous
houses dwellings, till you see one of these beautiful, prettily
dressed women emerge from them — see her emerge from a
dark, dreary-looking den that looks dungeon all over, from the
ground away half-way up to heaven. And then you wonder
that such a charming moth could come from such a forbidding
shell as that. The streets are wisely made narrow and the
houses heavy and thick and stony, in order that the people
anay be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool, and
stay so. And while I think of it — the men wear hats and
have very dark complexions, but the women wear no head
gear but a flimsy veil like a gossamer's web, and yet are
exceedingly fair as a general thing. Singular, isn't it ?
The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied
MASSIVE ARCHITECTURE. 167
by one family, but they could accommodate a hundred, I should
think. They are relics of the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days
— the days when she was a great commercial and maritime
power several centuries ago. These houses, solid marble pal
aces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish color,
outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese
battle-scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids and with
familiar illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the
paint has yielded to age and exposure and is peeling off in
flakes and patches, the effect is not happy. A noseless Cupid,
or a Jupiter with an eye out, or a Venus with a fly -blister
on her breast, are not attractive features in a picture. Some
of these painted walls reminded me somewhat of the tall van,
plastered with fanciful bills and posters, that follows the band
wagon of a circus about a country village. I have not read or
heard that the outsides of the houses of any other European
city are frescoed in this way.
I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such
massive arches, such ponderous substructions as support these
towering broad- winged edifices, we have seldom seen before ;
and surely the great blocks of stone of which these edifices are
built can never decay ; walls that are as thick as an ordinary
American doorway is high, can not crumble.
The Republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the
middle ages. Their ships filled the Mediterranean, and they
carried on an extensive commerce with Constantinople and
Syria. Their warehouses were the great distributing depots
from whence the costly merchandise of the East was sent
abroad over Europe. They were warlike little nations, and
defied, in those days, governments that overshadow them now
as mountains overshadow molehills. The Saracens captured
and pillaged Genoa nine hundred years ago, but during the
following century Genoa and Pisa entered into an offensive
and defensive alliance and besieged the Saracen colonies in
Sardinia and the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy that main
tained its pristine vigor and held to its purpose for forty long
years. They were victorious at last, and divided their con-
168
A SCRAP OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
iron
Genoa's greatness
quests equably among their great patrician families. Descen
dants of some of those proud families still inhabit the palaces
of Genoa, and trace in their own features a resemblance to the
grim knights whose portraits hang in their stately halls, and
to pictured beauties with pouting lips and merry eyes whose
originals have been dust and ashes for many a dead and for
gotten century.
The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders
of knights of the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its
mailed sentinels once kept watch and ward in its massive
turrets and woke the
echoes of these halls and
corridors with their
heels.
But
has degenerated into an
unostentatious commerce
in velvets and silver fila
gree work. They say that
each European town has
its specialty. These fila
gree things are Genoa's
specialty. Her smiths take
silver ingots and work
them up into all manner
of graceful and beautiful
forms. They make bunch
es of flowers, from flakes
and wires of silver, that
counterfeit the delicate cre
ations the frost weaves
upon a window pane ; and we were shown a miniature silver
temple whose fluted columns, whose Corinthian capitals and
rich entablatures, whose spire, statues, bells, and ornate lavish-
ness of sculpture were wrought in polished silver, and with
such matchless art that .every detail was a fascinating study,
and the finished edifice a wonder of beauty.
STATUE OF COLUMBUS.
GRAVES FOR SIXTY THOUSAND.
169
We are ready to move again, though we are not really tired,
yet, of the narrow passages of this old marble cave. Cave is a
good word — when speaking of Genoa under the stars. When
we have been prowling at midnight through the gloomy crev
ices they call streets, where no foot falls but ours were echoing,
where only ourselves were abroad, and lights appeared only at
long intervals and at a distance, and mysteriously disappeared
GRAVES OF SIXTY THOUSAND.
again, and the houses at our elbows seemed to stretch upward
farther than ever toward the heavens, the memory of a cave I
used to know at home was always in my mind, with its lofty
passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its
sepulchral echoes, its flitting lights, and more than all, its
sudden revelations of branching crevices and corridors where
we least expected them.
We are not tired of the endless processions of cheerful, chat
tering gossipers that throng these courts and streets all day
long, either; nor of the coarse-robed monks; nor of the "Asti"
170 GRAVES FOR SIXTY THOUSAND.
wines, which that old doctor (whom we call the Oracle,) with
customary felicity in the matter of getting every thing wrong,
misterms " nasty." But we must go, nevertheless.
Our last sight was the cemetery, (a burial-place intended to
accommodate 60,000 bodies,) and we shall continue to remem
ber it after we shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast
marble collonaded corridor extending around a great unoccu
pied square of ground ; its broad floor is marble, and on every
slab is an inscription — for every slab covers a corpse. On
either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are
monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely
wrought and are full of grace and beauty. They are new,
and snowy ; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of
mutilation, flaw or blemish ; and therefore, to us these far-
reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold more
lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved
from the wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of
Paris for the worship of the world.
Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we
are now ready to take the cars for Milan.
OHAPTEE XVIII.
ALL day long we sped through a mountainous country
whose peaks were bright with sunshine, whose hillsides
were dotted with pretty villas sitting in the midst of gardens
and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines were cool and shady,
and looked ever so inviting from where we and the birds were
winging our flight through the sultry upper air.
We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our per
spiration, though. We timed one of them. We were twenty
minutes passing through it, going at the rate of thirty to
thirty-five miles an hour.
Beyond Alessandria we passed the battle-field of Marengo.
Toward dusk we drew near Milan, and caught glimpses of
the city and the blue mountain peaks beyond. But we were
not caring for these things — they did not interest us in the
least. We were in a fever of impatience ; we were dying to
see the renowned Cathedral ! We watched — in this direction
and that — all around — every where. We needed no one to
point it out — we did not wish any one to point it out — we
would recognize it, even in the desert of the great Sahara.
At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the
amber sunlight, rose slowly above the pigmy house-tops, as
one sometimes sees, in the far horizon, a gilded and pinnacled
mass of cloud lift itself above the waste of waves, at sea, — the
Cathedral ! We knew it in a moment.
Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural
autocrat was our sole object of interest.
What a wonder it is 1 So grand, so solemn, so vast ! And
172 THE GRAND MILAN CATHEDRAL.
yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful ! A very world of solid
weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy
delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a breath ! How
sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of spires were
cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon its
snowy roof! It was a vision ! — a miracle! — an anthem sung
in stone, a poem wrought in marble !
Howsoever you look at the great Cathedral, it is noble, it is
beautiful ! Wherever you stand in Milan, or within seven
miles of Milan, it is visible — and wrhen it is visible, no other
object can chain your whole attention. Leave your eyes
unfettered by your will but a single instant and they will
surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when
you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests
upon at night. Surely, it must be the princeliest creation that
ever brain of man conceived.
At nine o'clock in the morning we wrent and stood before
this marble colossus. The central one of its five great doors is
bordered with a bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and
insects, which have been so ingeniously carved out of the
marble that they seem like living creatures — and the figures
are so numerous and the design so complex, that one might
study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the great
steeple — surmounting the myriad of spires — inside of the spires
— over the doors, the windows — in nooks and corners — every"
where that a niche or a perch can be found about the enor
mous building, from summit to base, there is a marble statue,
and every statue is a study in itself! Eaphael, Angelo,
Canova — giants like these gave birth to the designs, and their
own pupils carved them. Every face is eloquent with expres
sion, and every attitude is full of grace. Away above, on the
lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring
high in the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky
beyond. In their midst the central steeple towrers proudly up
like the mainmast of some great Indiaman among a fleet of
coasters.
"We wished to go aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble
ROOFS AND SPIKES OF CATIlEWtAL AT MILAN.
THE GRAND MILAN CATHEDRAL.
173
stairway (of course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest
—there is no other stone, no brick, no wood, among its build-
CENTRAL DOOR OF CATHEDRAL AT
ing materials,) and told us to go up one hundred and eighty-
two steps and stop till he came. It was not necessary to say
stop— we should have done that any how. We were tired by
the time we got there. This was the roof. Here, springing
from its broad marble flagstones, were the long files of spires,
looking very tall close at hand, but diminishing in the dis
tance like the pipes of an organ. We could see, now, that
the statue on the top of eacli was the size of a large man,
though they all looked like dolls from the street. We could
174
HIDEOUS PERFECTION IN SCULPTURE.
see, also, that from the inside of each and every one of these
hollow spires, from sixteen to thirty-one beautiful marble
statues looked out upon the world below.
From the eaves to the comb of the roof stretched in endless
succession great curved marble beams, like the fore-and-aft
braces of a steamboat, and along each beam from end to end
stood up a row of richly carved flowers and fruits — each sep
arate and distinct in kind, and over 15,000 species represented.
At a little distance these rows seem to close together like the
ties of a railroad track, and then the mingling together of the
E CATHEDRAL AT MILAN.
buds and blossoms of this marble garden forms a picture that
is very charming to the eye.
We descended and entered. Within the church, long rows
of fluted columns, like huge monuments, divided the building
AN UNPLEASANT ADVENTURE. 175
into broad aisles, and on the figured pavement fell many a
soft blush from the painted windows above. I knew the
church was very large, but I could not fully appreciate its
great size until I noticed that the men standing far down by
the altar looked like boys, and seemed to glide, rather than
walk. We loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows
all aglow with brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the
Saviour and his followers. Some of these pictures are mosaics,
and so artistically are their thousand particles of tinted glass
or stone put together that the work has all the smoothness
and finish of a painting. We counted sixty panes of glass in
one window, and each pane was adorned with one of these
master achievements of genius and patience.
The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture
which he said was considered to have come from the hand of
Phidias, since it was not possible that any other artist, of any
epoch, could have copied nature with such faultless accuracy.
The figure was that of a man without a skin ; with every vein,
artery, muscle, every fibre and tendon and tissue of the human
frame, represented in minute detail. It looked natural, because
somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man
would be likely to look that way, unless his attention were
occupied with some other matter. It was a hideous thing, and
yet there was a fascination about it some where. I am very
sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it, now. I shall
dream of it, sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its
corded arms on the" bed's head and looking down on me with
its dead eyes ; I shall dream that it is stretched between the
sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and
its stringy cold legs.
It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how
I ran off from school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty
late at night, concluded to climb into the window of my
father's office and sleep on a lounge, because I had a delicacy
about going home and getting thrashed. As I lay on the
lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I
fancied I could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched
176
AN UNPLEASANT ADVENTURE.
upon the floor. A cold shiver went through me. I turned
my face to the wall. That did not answer. I was afraid that
that thing would creep over and seize me in the dark. I
turned back and stared at it for minutes and minutes — they
seemed hours. It appeared to me that the lagging moonlight
never, never would get to it. I turned to the wall and
counted twenty, to pass the feverish time away. I looked—
the pale square was nearer. I turned again and counted fifty
— it was almost touching it. With desperate wrill I turned
again and counted one hundred, and faced about, all in a
tremble. A white human hand lay in the moonlight ! Such
BOYHOOD EXPERIEXCE.
an awful sinking at the heart — such a sudden gasp for breath !
I felt — I can not tell ivliat I felt. When I recovered strength
"
enough, I faced the wall again. But no boy could have
remained so, with that mysterious hand behind him. I
counted again, and looked — the most of a naked arm was
A GOOD MAN. 177
exposed. I put my hands over my eyes and counted till I
could stand it no longer, and then — the pallid face of a man
was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn down, and
the eyes fixed and glassy in death ! I raised to a sitting pos
ture and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the
bare breast, — line by line — inch by inch — past the nipple, —
and then it disclosed a ghastly stab !
I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in
any sort of a hurry, but I simply went — that is sufficient. I
went out at the window, and I carried the sash along with me.
I did not need the sash, but it was handier to take it than it
was to leave it, and so I took it. — I was not scared, but I was
considerably agitated.
When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it.
It seemed perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed
near the office that afternoon, and they carried him in there to
doctor him, but he only lived an hour. I have slept in the
same room with him often, since then — in my dreams.
Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar
of Milan Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from
lips that have been silent and hands that have been gestureless
for three hundred years.
The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his
candle. This was the last resting-place of a good man, a
warm-hearted, unselfish man ; a man whose whole life was
given to succoring the poor, encouraging the faint-hearted,
visiting the sick ; in relieving distress, whenever and wherever
he found it. His heart, his hand and his purse were always
open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his
benignant countenance moving calmly among the haggard
faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city,
brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where
pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct
of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying
with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a
time when parents forsook their children, the friend deserted
12
178 A SERMON FEOM THE TOMB.
the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while
her pleadings were still wailing in his ears.
This was good St. Charles Borrome'o, Bishop of Milan. The
people idolized him; princes lavished uncounted treasures
upon him. We stood in his tomb. Near by was the sarcoph
agus, lighted by the dripping candles. The walls were faced
with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in massive
silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his
black robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to
turn a windlass slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two
parts, lengthwise, and the lower part sank down and disclosed
a coffin of rock crystal as clear as the atmosphere. Within lay
the body, robed in costly habiliments covered with gold em
broidery and starred with scintillating gems. The decaying
head was black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the
bones, the eyes were gone, "there was a hole in the temple and
another in the cheek, and the skinny lips were parted as in a
ghastly smile ! Over this dreadful face, its dust and decay,
and its mocking grin, hung a crown sown thick with flashing
brilliants ; and upon the breast lay crosses and croziers of
solid gold that were splendid with emeralds and diamonds.
How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in
presence of the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of
Death ! Think of Milton, Shakspeare, Washington, standing
before a reverent world tricked out in the glass beads, the
brass ear-rings and tin trumpery of the savages of the plains !
Dead Bartolomeo preached his pregnant sermon, and its
burden was : You that worship the vanities of earth — you that
long for worldly honor, wrorldly wealth, worldly fame — behold
their worth !
To us it seemed that so good a man, so kind a heart, so
simple a nature, deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred
from the intrusion of prying eyes, and believed that he him
self would have preferred to have it so, but perad venture our
wisdom was at fault in this regard.
As we came out upon the floor of the church again, another
priest volunteered to show us the treasures of the church.
ALADDIN'S TREASURE-HOUSE.
179
What, more ? The furniture of the narrow chamber of death
we had just visited, weighed six millions of francs in ounces
and carats alone, without a penny thrown into the account for
the costly workmanship bestowed upon them ! But we fol
lowed into a large room filled with tall wooden presses like
wardrobes. He threw them open, and behold, the cargoes of
" crude bullion " of the assay offices of Nevada faded out of
my memory. There were Virgins and bishops there, above
their natural size, made of solid silver, each worth, by weight,
TREASURES OF THE CATHEDRAL.
from eight hundred thousand to two millions of francs, and
bearing gemmed books in their hands worth eighty thousand ;
there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred pounds, carved
in solid silver ; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks six and
eight feet high, all of virgin gold, and brilliant with precious
stones ; and beside these were all manner of cups and vases,
and such things, rich in proportion. It was an Aladdin's
180 COST OF CATHEDRAL.
palace. The treasures here, by simple weight, without count
ing workmanship, were valued at fifty millions of francs ! If
I could get the custody of them for a while, I fear me the mar
ket price of silver bishops would advance shortly, on account
of their exceeding scarcity in the Cathedral of Milan.
The priests showed us two of St. Paul's fingers, and one of
St. Peter's ; a bone of Judas Iscariot, (it was black.) and also
bones of all the other disciples ; a handkerchief in which the
Saviour had left the impression of his face. Among the most
precious of the relics were a stone from the Holy Sepulchre,
part of the crown of thorns, (they have a whole one at Notre
Dame,) a fragment of the purple robe worn by the Saviour, a
nail from the Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child
painted by the veritable hand of St. Luke. This is the second
of St. Luke's Yirgins we have seen. Once a year all these
holy relics are carried in procession through the streets of
Milan.
I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral.
The building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and
eighty wide, and the principal steeple is in the neighborhood
of four hundred feet high. It has 7,148 marble statues, and
will have upwards of three thousand more when it is finished.
In addition, it has one thousand five hundred bas-reliefs. It
has one hundred and thirty-six spires — twenty-one more are to
be added. Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a
half feet high. Every thing about the church is marble, and
all from the same quarry ; it was bequeathed to the Archbish
opric for this purpose centuries ago. So nothing but the
mere workmanship costs ; still that is expensive — the bill foots
up six hundred and eighty-four millions of francs, thus far
(considerably over a hundred millions of dollars,) and it is
estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet
to finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from
being so. We saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday,
alongside of one which had been standing these four hundred
years, they said. There are four staircases leading up to the
main steeple, each of which cost a hundred thousand dollars,
FATE OF THE ARCHITECT.
181
with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn them.
Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful
structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him
forty-six years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand
CATHEUttlAL AT iilLAN.
over to the builders. He is dead now. The building was
begun a little less than five hundred years ago, and the third
generation hence will not see it completed.
The building looks best by moonlight, because the older
portions of it being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly
182 ADIEU.
with the newer and whiter portions. It seems somewhat too
broad for its height, but may be familiarity with it might dissi
pate this impression.
They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St.
Peter's at Rome. I can not understand how it can be second
to any thing made by human hands.
We bid it good-bye, now — possibly for all time. How surely,
in some future day, when the memory of it shall have lost its
vividness, shall we half believe we have seen it in a wonderful
dream, but never with waking eyes !
CHAPTEE XIX.
HTA 0 you wis zo liaut can be ?"
-L^ That was what the guide asked, when we were look
ing up at the bronze horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant,
do you wish to go up there ? I give it as a specimen of guide-
English. These are the people that make life a burthen to the
tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk forever and
forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use. Inspi
ration itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would
only show you a masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a
prison-house, or a battle-field, hallowed by touching memories
or historical reminiscences, or grand traditions, and then step
aside and hold still for ten minutes and let you think, it would
not be so bad. But they interrupt every dream, every pleas
ant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling. Some
times when I have been standing before some cherished old
idol of mine that I remembered years and years ago in pic
tures in the geography at school, I have thought I would give
a whole world if the human parrot at my side would suddenly
perish where he stood and leave me to gaze, and ponder, and
worship.
No, we did not " wis zo haut can be." "We wished to go to
La Scala, the largest theatre in the world, I think they call it.
We did so. It was a large place. Seven separate and distinct
masses of humanity — six great circles and a monster parquette.
We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that
also. We saw a manuscript of Yirgil, with annotations in the
handwriting of Petrarch, the gentleman who loved another
184 DEFENSE OF ''ME. LAURA."
man's Laura, and lavished upon her all through life a love
which was a clear waste of the raw material. It was sound
sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame,
LA bO.-iLA TllliATlili.
and created a fountain of commiseration for them in senti
mental breasts that is running yet. But who says a word in
behalf of poor Mr. Laura ? (I do not know his other name.)
Who glorifies him ? Who bedews him with tears ? Who
writes poetry about him ? Nobody. How do you suppose he
liked the state of things that has given the world so much
pleasure ? How did he enjoy having another man following
his wife every where and making her name a familiar word in
every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with his sonnets to
her pre-empted eyebrows ? They got fame and sympathy — he
got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is
called poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not
chime with my notions of right. It is too one-sided — too un-
LUCREZIA BORGIA. 185
generous. Let the world go on fretting about Laura and
Petrarch if it will ; but as for me, my tears and my lamenta
tions shall be lavished upon the unsung defendant.
We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady
for whom I have always entertained the highest respect, on
account of her rare histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid
gold goblets made of gilded wood, her high distinction as an
operatic screamer, and the facility with, which she could order
a sextuple funeral and get the corpses ready for it. We saw
one single coarse yellow hair from Lucrezia's head, likewise.
It awoke emotions, but we still live. In this same library we
saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call him
Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Yinci. (They spell it Yinci
and pronounce it Yinchy ; foreigners always spell better than
they pronounce.) We reserve our opinion of these sketches.
In another building they showed us a fresco representing some
lions and other beasts drawing chariots ; and they seemed to
project so far from the wall that we took them to be sculp
tures. The artist had shrewdly heightened the delusion by
painting dust on the creatures' backs, as if it had fallen there
naturally and properly. Smart fellow — if it be smart to
deceive strangers.
Elsewhere we saw a huge Roman amphitheatre, with its
stone seats still in good preservation. Modernized, it is now
the scene of more peaceful recreations than the exhibition of a
party of wild beasts with Christians for dinner. Part of the
time, the Milanese use it for a race track, and at other seasons
they flood it with water and have spirited yachting regattas
there. The guide told us these things, and he would hardly
try so hazardous an experiment as the telling of a falsehood,
when it is all he can do to speak the truth in English without
getting the lock-jaw.
In another place we were shown a sort of summer arbor, with
a fence before it. We said that was nothing. We looked
again, and saw, through the arbor, an endless stretch of gar
den, and shrubbery, and grassy lawn. We were perfectly wil
ling to go in there and rest, but it could not be done. It was
186 DISTRESSING BILLIARDS.
only another delusion — a pain ting, by some ingenious artist
with little charity in his heart for tired folk. The deception
was perfect. No one could have imagined the park was not
real. We even thought we smelled the flowers at first.
We got a carriage at twilight and drove in the shaded ave
nues with the other nobility, and after dinner we took wine
and ices in a fine garden with the great public. The music
was excellent, the flowers and shrubbery were pleasant to the
eye, the scene was vivacious, every body was genteel and well-
behaved, and the ladies were slightly moustached, and hand
somely dressed, but very homely.
We adjourned to a cafe" and played billiards an hour, and I
made six or seven points by the doctor pocketing his ball, and
he made as many by my pocketing my ball. We came near
making a carom sometimes, but not the one we were trying to
make. The table was of the usual European style — cushions
dead and twice as high as the balls ; the cues in bad repair.
The natives play only a sort of pool on them. We have never
seen any body playing the French three-ball game yet, and I
doubt if there is any such game known in France, or that there
lives any man mad enough to try to play it on one of these
European tables. We had to stop playing, finally, because
Dan got to sleeping fifteen minutes between the counts and
paying no attention to his marking.
Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular
streets for some time, enjoying other people's comfort and
wishing we could export some of it to our restless, driving,
vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in this one matter
lies the main charm of life in Europe — comfort. In America,
we hurry — which is well ; but when the day's work is done,
we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow,
we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and
wrorry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked
bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with
these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and
mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime
in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and
THE CHARM OF EUROPEAN LIFE. 187
well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season ; we take no man
clear across the continent in the same coach he started in — the
coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated ma
chinery allowed to cool for a few days ; when a razor has seen
long service and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it
away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own
accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects,
but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a na
tion of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves
on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges !
I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When
the work of the day is done, they forget it. Some of them go,
with wife and children, to a beer hall, and sit quietly and gen
teelly drinking a mug or two of ale and listening to music ;
others walk the streets, others drive in the avenues ; others
assemble in the great ornamental squares in the early evening
to enjoy the sight and the fragrance of flowers and to hear the
military bands play — no European city being without its fine
military music at eventide ; and yet others of the populace sit
in the open air in front of the refreshment houses and eat ices
and drink mild beverages that could not harm a child. They
go to bed moderately early, and sleep well. They are always
quiet, always orderly, always cheerful, comfortable, and appre
ciative of life and its manifold blessings. One never sees a
drunken man among them. The change that has come over
our little party is surprising. Day by day we lose some of our
restlessness and absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease
that is in the tranquil atmosphere about us and in the de
meanor of the people. We grow wise apace. We begin to
comprehend what life is for.
We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They
were going to put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we ob
jected. Each of us had an Italian farm on his back. We
could have felt affluent if we had been officially surveyed and
fenced in. We chose to have three bath-tubs, and large ones
—tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real estate,
and brought it with them. After we were stripped and had
188 "BEWARE, WOMAN!"
taken the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity
that has embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of
Italy and France — there was no soap. I called. A woman
answered, and I barely had time to throw myself against the
door — she would have been in, in another second. I said :
" Beware, woman ! Go away from here — go away, now, or
it will be the worse for you. I am an unprotected male, but I
will preserve my honor at the peril of my life !"
These words must have frightened her, for she skurried away
very fast.
Dan's voice rose on the air :
" Oh, bring some soap, why don't you!"
The reply was Italian. Dan resumed:
" Soap, you know — soap. That is what I want — soap.
S-o-a-p,'soap; s-o-p-e, soap ; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up ! I don't
know how you Irish spell it, but I want it. Spell it to suit
yourself, but fetch it. I'm freezing."
I heard the doctor say, impressively :
" Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners can
not understand English ? Why will you not depend upon us ?
Why will you not tell us what you want, and let us ask for it
in the language of the country? It would save us a great deal
of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance causes us. I
will address this person in his mother tongue : 4 Here, cospetto !
corpo di Bacco! Sacramento ! Solferino! — Soap, you son of a
gun !' Dan, if you would let us talk for you, you would never
expose your ignorant vulgarity."
Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the so.ap
at once, but there was a good reason for it. There was not
such an article about the establishment. It is my belief that
there never had been. They had to send far up town, and to
several different places before they finally got it, so they said.
We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. The same thing
had occurred the evening before, at the hotel. I think I have
divined the reason for this state of things at last. The Eng
lish know how to travel comfortably, and they carry soap with
them ; other foreigners do not use the article.
189
At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for
soap, at the last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for
dinner, and they put it in the bill along with the candles and
other nonsense. In Marseilles they make half the fancy toilet
soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a
vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained
from books of travel, just as they have acquired an uncertain
notion of clean shirts, and the peculiarities of the gorilla, and
other curious matters. This reminds me of poor Blucher's
note to the landlord in Paris :
" PARIS, le 7 Juillet
" Monsieur le Landlord — Sir : Pourquoi don't you mettez some savon in your bed
chambers ? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it ? La nuit passee you charged me
pour deux chandtlles when I only had one ; hier vous avez charged me avec glace
when I had none at all ; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on
me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a neces
sary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman, et je laurai hors de cet hotel or make
trouble. You hear me, Allons.
BLUCHER."
I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it
was so mixed up that the landlord would never be able to
make head or tail of it ; but Blucher said he guessed the old
man could read the French of it and average the rest.
Blucher's French is bad enough, but it is not much worse
than the English one finds in advertisements all over Italy
every day. For instance, observe the printed card of the hotel
we shall probably stop at on the shores of Lake Como :
"NOTISH."
" This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb,
is handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with
the most splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King
of Belgian, and Serbelloni. This hotel have recently en
large, do offer all commodities on moderate price, at the
strangers gentlemen who whish spend the seasons on the
Lake Come."
How is that, for a specimen ? In the hotel is a handsome
little chapel where an English clergyman is employed to preach
to such of the guests of the house as hail from England and
190 AN ILLUSTRIOUS PAINTING.
America, and this fact is also set forth in barbarous English in
the same advertisement. Wouldn't you have supposed that the
adventurous linguist who framed the card would have known
enough to submit it to that clergyman before he sent it to the
printer ?
Here, in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church,
is the mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the
world — " The Last Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci. We are
not infallible judges of pictures, but of course we went there
to see this wonderful painting, once so beautiful, always so wor
shipped by masters in art, and forever to be famous in song
and story. And the first thing that occurred was the infliction
on us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take
a morsel of it :
" Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand side at the spectator,) un
certain and doubtful about what he thinks to have heard, and upon which he wants
to be assured by himself at Christ and by no others."
Good, isn't it ? And then Peter is described as " argument-
ing in a threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot."
This paragraph recalls the picture. " The Last Supper " is
painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel
attached to the main church in ancient times, I suppose. It is
battered and scarred in every direction, and stained and discol
ored by time, and Napoleon's horses kicked the legs off most
the disciples when they (the horses, not the disciples,) were sta
bled there more than half a century ago.
I recognized the old picture in a moment — the Saviour with
bowed head seated at the centre of a long, rough table with
scattering fruits and dishes upon it, and six disciples on either
side in their long robes, talking to each other — the picture from
which all engravings and all copies have been made for three
centuries. Perhaps no living man has ever known an attempt to
paint the Lord's Supper differently. The world seems to have
become settled in the belief, long ago, that it is not possible for
human genius to outdo this creation of Da Vinci's. I suppose
painters will go on copying it as long as any of the original is
OLD MASTERS.
191
left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in the room,
and as many artists transferring the great picture to their can
vases. Fifty proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were
scattered around, too. And as usual, I could not help noticing
how superior the copies were to the original, that is, to my in
experienced eye. Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a
Michael Angelo, a Caracci, or a Da Yinci (and we see them
every day,) you find artists copying them, and the copies are
always the handsomest. May be the originals were handsome
when they were new, but they are not now.
This picture is about
thirty feet long, and ten
or twelve high, I should
think, and the figures are
at least life size. It is one of the largest paintings in Europe.
The colors are dimmed with age ; the countenances are scaled
192 AMATEUR RAPTURES.
and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them;
the hair is a dead blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the
eyes. Only the attitudes are certain.
People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify
this masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated
breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the
catchy ejaculations of rapture :
" O, wonderful !"
" Such expression !"
" Such grace of attitude !"
" Such dignity !"
" Such faultless drawing !"
" Such matchless coloring !"
" Such feeling !"
" What delicacy of touch !"
" What sublimity of conception !"
" A vision ! a vision !"
I only envy these people ; I envy them their honest admi
ration, if it be honest — their delight, if they feel delight. I
harbor no animosity toward any of them. But at the same
time the thought will intrude itself upon me, How can they
see what is not visible ? What would you think of a man who
looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleo
patra, and said : " What matchless beauty ! What soul ! What
expression !" What would you think of a man who gazed
upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said : " What sublimity ! what
feeling ! what richness of coloring !" What would you think
of a man who stared in ecstacy upon a desert of stumps and
said : " Oh, my soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is
here 1"
You would think that those men had an astonishing talent
for seeing things that had already passed away. It was wrhat
I thought when I stood before the Last Supper and heard men
apostrophizing wonders, and beauties and perfections which had
faded out of the picture and gone, a hundred years before they
were born. We can imagine the beauty that was once in an
aged face ; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps ;
UNINSPIRED CRITICS. 193
but we can not absolutely see these things when they are not
there. I am willing to believe that the eye of the practiced
artist can rest upon the Last Supper and renew a lustre where
only a hint of it is left, supply a tint that has faded away, re
store an expression that is gone; patch, and color, and add, to
the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand before him
aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all
the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the
hand of the master. But / can not work this miracle. Can
those other uninspired visitors do it, or do they only happily
imagine they do ?
After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last
Supper was a very miracle of art once. But it was three hun
dred years ago.
It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of " feeling," "ex
pression," " tone," and those other easily acquired and inex
pensive technicalities of art that make such a fine show in
conversations concerning pictures. There is not one man in
seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is in
tended to express. There is not one man in five hundred that
can go into a court-room and be sure that he wrill not mistake
some harmless innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted
assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of " character " and
presume to interpret " expression " in pictures. There is an
old story that Matthews, the actor, was once lauding the abil
ity of the human face to express the passions and emotions
hidden in the breast. He said the countenance could disclose
what was passing in the heart plainer than the tongue could.
" Now," he said, " observe my face — what does it express ?"
"Despair!"
" Bah, it expresses peaceful resignation ! "What does this
express ?"
" Rage !"
" Stuff ! it means terror ! This /"
" Imbecility !"
" Fool ! It is smothered ferocity ! Now this /"
"Joy!"
13
194
PAINTING OF THE VIRGIN MARY.
" Oh, perdition ! Any ass can see it means insanity !"
Expression ! People coolly pretend to read it who would
think themselves presumptuous if they pretended to interpret
the hieroglyphics on the obelisks of Luxor — yet they are fully
as competent to do the one thing as the other. I have heard
FACIAL EXPRESSION.
two very intelligent critics speak of Murillo's Immaculate Con
ception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the past few
days. One said :
" Oh, the Virgin's face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is
complete — that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth !"
The other said :
"Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading — it says
as plainly as words could say it : 'I fear ; I tremble ; I am
unworthy. But Thy will be done ; sustain Thou Thy ser
vant !' "
The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room ; it can
be easily recognized : the Virgin (the only young and really
beautiful Virgin that was ever painted by one of the old mas
ters, some of us think,) stands in the crescent of the new moon,
with a multitude of cherubs hovering about her, and more
coming ; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and upon her
uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens. The
reader may amuse himself, if he chooses, in trying to deter
mine which of these gentlemen read the Virgin's " expression "
aright, or if either of them did it.
Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will com
prehend how much the Last Supper is damaged when I say
that the spectator can not really tell, now, whether the dis
ciples are Hebrews or Italians. These ancient painters never
ITALY. — IN THE COUNTRY. 195
succeeded in denationalizing themselves. The Italian artists
painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the
Virgins of the French painters were Frenchwomen — none of
them ever put into the face of the Madonna that indescribable
something which proclaims the Jewess, whether you find her
in New York, in Constantinople, in Paris, Jerusalem, or in the
Empire of Morocco. I saw in the Sandwich Islands, once, a
picture, copied by a talented German artist from an engraving
in one of the American illustrated papers. It was an allegory,
representing Mr. Davis in the act of signing a secession act or
some such document. Over him hovered the ghost of Wash
ington in warning attitude, and in the background a troop of
shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform were limping with
shoeless, bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm. Valley
Forge was suggested, of course. The copy seemed accurate,
and yet there was a discrepancy somewhere. After a long ex
amination I discovered what it was — the shadowy soldiers were
all Germans ! Jeff. Davis was a German ! even the hovering
ghost was a German ghost ! The artist had unconsciously
worked his nationality into the picture. To tell the truth, I
am getting a little perplexed about John the Baptist and his
portraits. In France I finally grew reconciled to him as a
Frenchman ; here he is unquestionably an Italian. What
next ? Can it be possible that the painters make John the
Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid and an Irishman in Dublin ?
We took an open barouche and drove two miles out of Milan
to " see ze echo," as the guide expressed it. The road was
smooth, it was bordered by trees, fields, and grassy meadows,
and the soft air was filled with the odor of flowers. Troops
of picturesque peasant girls, coming from work, hooted at us,
shouted at us, made all manner of game of us, and entirely
delighted me. My long-cherished judgment was confirmed.
I always did think those frowsy, romantic, unwashed peasant
girls I had read so much about in poetry were a glaring fraud.
We enjoyed our jaunt. It was an exhilarating relief from
tiresome sight-seeing.
We distressed ourselves very little about the astonishing
196
A WONDERFUL ECHO.
echo the guide talked so much about. "We were growing
accustomed to encomiums on wonders that too often proved no
wonders at all. And so we were most happily disappointed to
find in the sequel that the guide had even failed to rise to the
magnitude of his subject.
AVe arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo
Simonetti — a massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family
THE ECHO.
of ragged Italians. A good-looking young girl conducted us
to a window on the second floor which looked out on a court
walled on three sides by tall buildings. She put her head out
at the window and shouted. The echo answered more times
than we could count. She took a speaking trumpet and
through it she shouted, sharp and quick, a single
" Ha !" The echo answered :
" Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha !— ha !-ha ! ha ! h-a-a-a-a-a !"
A WONDERFILL ECHO.
197
and finally went off into a rollicking convulsion of the jolliest
laughter that could be imagined. It was so joyful — so loner
continued — so perfectly cordial and hearty, that every body
was forced to join in. There was no resisting it.
Then the girl took a gun and fired it. We stood ready to
count the astonishing clatter of reverberations. We could not
say one, two, three, fast enough, but we could dot our note
books with our pencil points almost rapidly enough to take
down a sort of short-hand report of the result. My page re
vealed the following account. I could not keep up, but I did
as well as I could :
FIFTY-TWO DISTINCT REPETITIONS.
I set down fifty-two distinct repetitions, and then the echo
got the advantage of me. The doctor set down sixty-four, and
thenceforth the echo moved too fast for him, also. After the
separate concussions could no longer be noted, the reverbera
tions dwindled to a wild, long-sustained clatter of sounds such
as a watchman's rattle produces. It is likely that this is the
most remarkable echo iu the world.
198
A KISS FOR A FRANC.
The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl, and was
taken a little aback when
she said he might fora franc !
The commonest gallantry
compelled him to stand by
his offer, and so he paid the
franc and took the kiss. She
was a philosopher. She said
a franc was a good thing to
have, and she did not care
any thing for one paltry
kiss, because she had a
million left. Then our
comrade, always a shrewd
business man, offered to
take the whole cargo at
thirty days, but that little
financial scheme was a failure.
CHAPTER XX.
"TTT~E left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles
* V behind us — vast, dreamy, blueish snow-clad mountains
twenty miles in front of us, — these were the accented points in
the scenery. The more immediate scenery consisted of fields
and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed dwarf and
a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not show-
people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in
Italy to attract attention.
We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep,
wooded, cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and
there, and with dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up
toward the drifting clouds. We lunched at the curious old
town of Como, at the foot of the lake, and then took the small
steamer and had an afternoon's pleasure excursion to this
place, — Bellaggio.
When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose
cocked hats and showy uniforms would shame the finest uni
form in the military service of the United States,) put us into
a little stone cell and locked us in. We had the whole passen
ger list for company, but their room would have been prefer
able, for there was no light, there were no windows, no venti
lation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It
was the Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently
a smoke rose about our feet — a smoke that smelt of all the
dead things of earth, of all the putrefaction and corruption
imaginable.
We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was
hard to tell which of us carried the vilest fragrance.
200
FUMIGATED.
These miserable outcasts called that " fumigating " us, and
the term was a tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard
themselves against the cholera, though we hailed from no in
fected port. We had left the cholera far behind us all the
time. However, they must keep epidemics away somehow or
other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must either
wash themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower
classes had rather die than wash, but the fumigation of stran-
THE FUMIGATIOX.
gers causes them no pangs. They need no fumigation them
selves. Their habits make it unnecessary. They carry their
preventive with them ; they sweat and fumigate all the day
long. I trust I am a humble and a consistent Christian. I try
to do what is right. I know it is my duty to " pray for them
that despitefully use me ;" and therefore, hard as it is, I shall
still try to pray for these fumigating, maccaroni-stuffing organ
grinders.
NIGHT BY THE LAKE OF COMO. 201
Our hotel sits at the water's edge — at least its front garden
(joes — .incl we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twi
light ; we look afar off at Switzerland and the Alps, and feel
an indolent willingness to look no closer ; we go down the
steps and swim in the lake ; we take a shapely little boat and
sail abroad among the reflections of the stars ; lie on the
thwarts and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft
melody of flutes and guitars that comes floating across the wa
ter from pleasuring gondolas ; we close the evening with exas
perating billiards on one of those same old execrable tables.
A midnight luncheon in our ample bed-chamber ; a final smoke
in its contracted veranda facing the water, the gardens and the
-mountains ; a summing up of the day's events. Then to bed,
with drowsy brains harassed with a mad panorama that mixes
up pictures of France, of Italy, of the ship, of the ocean, of
home, in grotesque and bewildering disorder. Then a melting
away of familiar faces, of cities and of tossing waves, into a
great calm of forgetfulness and peace.
After which, the nightmare.
Breakfast in the morning, and then the Lake.
I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much
finer. I have to confess now, however, that my judgment
erred somewhat, though not extravagantly. I always had
an idea that Como was a vast basin of water, like Tahoe, shut
in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge mountains
is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked as
any brook, and only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as
the Mississippi. There is not a yard of low ground on either
side of it — nothing but endless chains of mountains that spring
abruptly from the water's edge, and tower to altitudes varying
from a thousand to two thousand feet. Their craggy sides are
clothed with vegetation, and white specks of houses peep out
from the luxuriant foliage every where ; they are even perched
upon jutting and picturesque pinnacles a thousand feet above
your head.
Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats,
surrounded by gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, some-
202
ITS SCENERY.
times in nooks carved by Nature out of the vine-hung preci
pices, and with no ingress or egress save by boats. Some have
great broad stone staircases leading down to the water, with
heavy stone balustrades ornamented with statuary and fanci
fully adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored flowers —
for all the world like a drop-curtain in a theatre, and lacking
nothing but long-waisted, high-heeled women and plumed
gallants in silken tights coming down to go serenading in the
splendid gondola in waiting.
LAKE COMO.
A great feature of Como's attractiveness is the multitude of
pretty houses and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on
its mountain sides., They look so snug and so homelike, and
at eventide when every thing seems to slumber, and the music
of the vesper bells comes stealing over the water, one almost
believes that nowhere else than on the Lake of Como can there
be found such a paradise of tranquil repose.
ITS SCENERY. 203
From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the
other side of the lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture.
A scarred and wrinkled precipice rises to a height of eighteen
hundred feet ; on a tiny bench half way up its vast wall, sits a
little snow-flake of a church, no bigger than a martin-box, ap
parently ; skirting the base of the cliff are a hundred orange
groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white dwell
ings that are buried in them ; in front, three or four gondolas
lie idle upon the water — and in the burnished mirror of the
lake, mountain, chapel, houses, groves and boats are counter
feited so brightly and so clearly that one scarce knows where
the reality leaves off and the reflection begins !
The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a
grove-plumed promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its
palace in the blue depths ; in midstream a boat is cutting the
shining surface and leaving a long track behind, like a ray of
light ; the mountains beyond are veiled in a dreamy purple
haze ; far in the opposite direction a tumbled mass of domes
and verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here indeed
does distance lend enchantment to the view — for on this broad
canvas, sun and clouds and the richest of atmospheres have
blended a thousand tints together, and over its surface the
filmy lights and shadows drift, hour after hour, and glorify it
with a beauty that seems reflected out of Heaven itself. Be
yond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we have
yet looked upon.
Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the
other side crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in
the lake with a wonderful distinctness, and streams of light
from many a distant window shot far abroad over the still wa
ters. On this side, near at hand, great mansions, white with
moonlight, glared out from the midst of masses of foliage that
lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell from the cliff
above — and down in the margin of the lake every feature of
the weird vision was faithfully repeated.
To-day we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached
to a ducal estate — but enough of description is enough, I judge.
204 COMO COMPARED WITH TAHOE.
I suspect that this was the same place the gardener's son de
ceived the Lady of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may
have heard of the passage somewhere :
" A deep vale,
Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,
Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles :
Glassing softest skies, cloudless,
Save with rare and roseate shadows ;
A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,
From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds."
That is all very well, except the "clear" part of the lake.
It certainly is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull
its waters are compared with the wonderful transparence of
Lake Tahoe ! I speak of the north shore of Tahoe, where one
can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a hundred and
eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par here,
but with no success ; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at
fifty per cent, discount. At this rate I find some takers ; per
haps the reader will receive it on the same terms — ninety feet
instead of one hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered
that those are forced terms — Sheriff's sale prices. As far as I
am privately concerned, I abate not a jot of the original asser
tion that in those strangely magnifying waters one may count
the scales on a trout (a trout of the large kind,) at a depth of
a hundred and eighty feet — may see every pebble on the bot
tom — might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk of
the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in
my own experience I know they can not compare with those I am
speaking of. I have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a meas
ured depth of eighty-four feet I have seen them put their noses to
the bait and I could see their gills open and shut. I could hardly
have seen the trout themselves at that distance in the open air.
As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing
among the snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the
conviction comes strong upon me again that Como. would only
seem a bedizened little courtier in that august presence.
COMO COMPARED WITH TAHOE. 205
Sorrow and misfortune overtake the Legislature that still
from year to year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cogno
men ! Tahoe ! It suggests no crystal waters, no picturesque
shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea in the clouds : a sea that
has character, and asserts it in solemn calms, at times, at times
in savage storms ; a sea, whose royal seclusion is guarded by a
cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thou
sand feet above the level world ; a sea whose every aspect is
impressive, whose belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely
majesty types the Deity !
Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup.
It is Indian, and suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute —
possibly it is Digger. I am satisfied it was named by the Dig
gers — those degraded savages who roast their dead relatives,
then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with tar, and
"gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and ears,
and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning.
TJiese are the gentry that named the Lake.
People say that Tahoe means ''Silver Lake" — "Limpid Wa
ter" — "Falling Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup,
the favorite dish of the Digger tribe — and of the Pi-utes as
well. It isn't worth while, in these practical times, for people
to talk about Indian poetry — there never was any in them—
except in the Fennimore Cooper Indians. But they are an ex
tinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man.
I have camped with the Indians ; I have been on the war
path with them, taken part in the chase with them — for grass
hoppers ; helped them steal cattle ; I have roamed with them,
scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly eat the
whole race if I had a chance.
But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my compari
son of the Lakes. Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if peo
ple here tell the truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet
deep at this point, but it does not look a dead enough blue for
that. Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five
feet deep in the centre, by the State Geologist's measurement.
They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand
206 MEETING A SHIPMATE.
feet high : but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that state
ment is a good honest lie. The lake is a mile wide, here, and
maintains about that width from this point to its northern ex
tremity — which is distant sixteen miles : from here to its south
ern extremity — say fifteen miles — it is not over half a mile
wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad mountains
one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then
in the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles
wide, and its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits
are never free from snow the year round. One thing about it
is very strange : it never has even a skim of ice upon its sur
face, although lakes in the same range of mountains, lying in
a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in winter.
It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way
places and compare notes with him. We have found one of
ours here — an old soldier of the war, who is seeking bloodless
adventures and rest from his campaigns, in these sunny lands.*
* Col. J. HERON FOSTER, editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable
gentleman. As these sheets are being prepared for the press, I am pained to learn
of his decease shortly after his return home. — M. T.
CHAPTEE XXI.
~TTT~E voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through
* V wild mountain scenery, and by hamlets and villas,
and disembarked at the town of Lecco. They said it was two
hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo, and that we
would arrive there in good season for the railway train. We
got an open barouche and a wrild, boisterous driver, and set
out. It was delightful. We had a fast team and a perfectly
smooth road. There were towering cliffs on our left, and the
pretty Lago di Lecco on our right, and every now and then it
rained on us. Just before starting, the driver picked up, in
the street, a stump of a cigar an inch long, and put it in his
mouth. When he had carried it thus about an hour, I thought
it would be only Christian charity to give him a light. I
handed him my cigar,
which I had just
lit, and he put it in
his mouth and re
turned his stump to
his pocket ! I never
saw a more sociable
man. At least I
never saw a man
who was more socia
ble on a short ac
quaintance. SOCIAL DRIVER.
We saw interior
Italy, now. The houses were of solid stone, and not often in
good repair. The peasants and their children were idle, as
208
BLOODY SHRINES.
a general thing, and the donkeys and chicken^ made them
selves at home in drawing-room and bed-chamber and were
not molested. The drivers of each and every one of the
slow-moving market-carts we met were stretched in the sun
upon their merchandise, sound asleep. Every three or four
hundred yards, it seemed to me, wTe came upon the shrine of
some saint or other — a rude picture of him built into a huge
cross or a stone pillar by the road-side. — Some of the pic
tures of the Saviour were curiosities in their way. They
represented him stretch
ed upon the cross, his
countenance distorted
with agony. From the
wounds of the crown
of thorns ; from the pier
ced side ; from the mu
tilated hands and feet;
from the scourged body
—from every hand-
breadth of his person
streams of blood were
flowing! Such a gory,
ghastly spectacle would
frighten the children out
of their senses, I should
think. There were some
unique auxiliaries to the
painting which added
to its spirited effect.
These were genuine
wooden and iron imple
ments, and were prominently disposed round about the figure :
a bundle of nails ; the hammer to drive them ; the sponge ;
the reed that supported it ; the cup of vinegar ; the ladder
for the ascent of the cross ; the spear that pierced the Saviour's
side. The crown of thorns was made of real thorns, and was
nailed to the sacred head. In some Italian church-paintings,
WAYSIDE SHRINE.
HEART AND HOME OF PHI ESTCK AFT .
209
even by the old masters, the Saviour and the Virgin wear silver
or gilded crowns that are fastened to the pictured head with
nails. The effect is as grotesque as it is incongruous.
Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found
huge, coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the
shrines. It could not have diminished their sufferings any to
be so uncouthly represented. We were in the heart and
home of priestcraft — of a happy, cheerful, contented ignorance,
superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting
unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently, It suits
these people precisely ; let them enjoy it, along with the other
animals, and Heaven forbid that they be molested. We feel
no malice toward these fumigators.
We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreampt-of
old towns, w^edded to the customs and steeped in the dreams
of the elder ages, and perfectly unaware that the world turns
round ! And perfectly indifferent, too, as to whether it turns
around or stands still. They have nothing to do but eat and
sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a little when they can get a
friend to stand by and keep them awake. They are not paid
for thinking — they are not paid to fret about the world's con
cerns. They were
not respectable peo
ple — they were not
worthy people —
they were not learn
ed and wise and
brilliant people —
but in their breasts,
all their stupid lives
long, resteth a peace
that passeth under
standing ! How can PEACE AND HAPPINESa
men, calling them
selves men, consent to be so degraded and happy.
We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick
with ivy that swung its green banners down from towers and tur-
14
210
THRILLING MEDIEVAL ROMANCES.
rets where once some old Crusader's flag had floated. The driver
pointed to one of these ancient fortresses, and said, (I translate) :
" Do you see that great iron hook that projects from the
wall just under the highest window in the ruined tower ?"
We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no
doubt it was there.
"Well," he said, "there is a legend connected with that
CASTLE OF COUNT LUIGI.
iron hook. JSTearly seven hundred years ago, that castle was
the property of the noble Count Luigi Gennaro Guido Al-
phonso di Gen ova —
" What was his other name ?" said Dan.
THRILLING MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 211
" lie had no other name. The name I have spoken was all
the name he had. He was the son of—
" Poor but honest parents — that is all right — never mind the
particulars — go on with the legend."
THE LEGEND.
Well, then, all the world, at that time, was in a wild excite
ment about the Holy Sepulchre. All the great feudal lords in
Europe were pledging their lands and pawning their plate to
fit out men-at-arms so that they might join the grand armies
of Christendom and win renown in the Holy Wars. The
Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild Septem
ber morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering
culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his
donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever
stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him.
His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a
tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the
fortress, and he galloped away with a happy heart.
He made a raid on a neighboring baron and completed his
outfit with the booty secured. He then razed the castle to the
ground, massacred the family and moved on. They were
hardy fellows in the grand old days of chivalry. Alas ! those
days will never come again.
Count Luigi grew high in fame in Holy Land. He plunged
into the carnage of a hundred battles, but his good Excalibur
always brought him out alive, albeit often sorely wounded.
His face became browned by exposure to the Syrian sun in
long marches ; he suffered hunger and thirst ; he pined in
prisons, he languished in loathsome plague-hospitals. And
many and many a time he thought of his loved ones at home,
and wondered if all was well with them. But his heart said,
Peace, is not thy brother watching over thy household ?
***•***•*
Forty-two years waxed and waned ; the good fight was won ;
Godfrey reigned in Jerusalem — the Christian hosts reared the
banner of the cross above the Holy Sepulchre !
212 THRILLING MEDIEVAL ROMANCE.
Twilight was approaching. Fifty harlequins, in flowing
robes, approached this castle wearily, for they were on foot,
and the dust upon their garments betokened that they had
traveled far. They overtook a peasant, and asked him if it
were likely they could get food and a hospitable bed there, for
love of Christian charity, and if perchance, a moral parlor
entertainment might meet with generous countenance — " for,"
said they, " this exhibition hath no feature that could offend
the most fastidious taste."
" Marry," quoth the peasant, " an' it please your worships,
ye had better journey many a good rood hence with your
juggling circus than trust your bones in yonder castle."
" How now, sirrah !" exclaimed the chief monk, " explain
thy ribald speech, or by'r Lady it shall go hard with thee."
" Peace, good mountebank, I did but utter the truth that
was in my heart. San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find
the stout Count Leonardo in his cups, sheer from the castle's
topmost battlements would he hurl ye all ! Alack-a-day, the
good Lord Luigi reigns not here in these sad times."
" The good Lord Luigi ?"
" Aye, none other, please your worship. In his day, the
poor rejoiced in plenty and the rich he did oppress ; taxes were
not known, the fathers of the church waxed fat upon his
bounty ; travelers went and came, with none to interfere ; and
whosoever would, might tarry in his halls in cordial welcome,
and eat his bread and drink his wine, withal. But wroe is
me ! some two and forty years agone the good count rode
hence to fight for Holy Cross, and many a year hath flown
since word or token have we had of him. Men say his bones
lie bleaching in the fields of Palestine."
" And now ?"
" NOIV ! God 'a mercy, the cruel Leonardo lords it in the
castle. He wrings taxes from the poor ; he robs all travelers
that journey by his gates ; he spends his days in feuds and
murders, and his nights in revel and debauch ; he roasts the
fathers of the church upon his kitchen spits, and enjoyeth the
same, calling it pastime. These thirty years Luigi's countess
THRILLING MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 213
hath not been seen by any he in all this land, and many whisper
that she pines in the dungeons of the castle for that she will
not wed with Leonardo, saying her dear lord still liveth and
that she will die ere she prove false to him. They whisper
likewise that her daughter is a prisoner as well. Nay, good
jugglers, seek ye refreshment other wheres. 'Twere better
that ye perished in a Christian way than that ye plunged from
off yon dizzy tower. Give ye good-day."
" God keep ye, gentle knave — farewell."
But heedless of the peasant's warning, the players moved
straightway toward the castle.
Word was brought to Count Leonardo that a company of
mountebanks besought his hospitality.
" -Tis well. Dispose of them in the customary manner.
Yet stay! I have need of them. Let them come hither.
Later, cast them from the battlements — or — how many priests
have ye on hand ?"
" The day's results are meagre, good my lord. An abbot
and a dozen beggarly friars is all we have."
" Hell and furies ! Is the estate going to seed ? Send hither
the mountebanks. Afterward, broil them with the priests."
The robed and close-cowled harlequins entered. The grim
Leonardo sate in state at the head of his council board.
Ranged up and down the hall on either hand stood near a
hundred men-at-arms.
" Ha, villains !" quoth the count, " What can ye do to earn
the hospitality ye crave."
" Dread lord and mighty, crowded audiences have greeted
our humble efforts with rapturous applause. Among our
body count we the versatile and talented Ugolino ; the justly
celebrated Rodolpho ; the gifted and accomplished Roderigo ;
the management have spared neither pains nor expense —
" S'death ! what can ye do? Curb thy prating tongue."
" Good my lord, in acrobatic feats, in practice with the
dumb-bells, in balancing and ground and lofty tumbling are
we versed — and sith your highness asketh me, I venture here
to publish that in the truly marvelous and entertaining Zam-
pillaerostation —
THRILLING MEDIEVAL ROMANCE.
" Gag him ! throttle him ! Body of Bacchus ! am I a dog
that I am to be assailed with polysyllabled blasphemy like to
this ? But hold ! Lucretia, Isabel, stand forth ! Sirrah, behold
this dame, this weeping wench. The first I marry, within the
hour; the other shall dry her tears or feed the vultures.
Thou and thy vagabonds shall crown the wedding with thy
merry-makings. Fetch hither the priest !"
The dame sprang toward the chief player.
" O, save me !" she cried ; " save me from a fate far worse
than death ! Behold these sad -eyes, these sunken cheeks,
this withered frame ! See thou the wreck this fiend hath
made, and let thy heart be moved with pity ! Look upon this
damosel; note her wasted form, her halting step, her bloomless
cheeks where youth should blush and happiness exult in
smiles ! Hear us and have compassion. This monster was
my husband's brother. He who should have been our shield
against all harm, hath kept us shut within the noisome caverns
of his donjon-keep for lo these thirty years. And for what
crime ? None other than that I would not belie my troth,
root out my strong love for him who marches with the legions
of the cross in Holy Land, (for O, he is not dead!) and wed
with him ! Save us, O, save thy persecuted suppliants !"
She flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees.
" Ha !-ha !-ha !" shouted the brutal Leonardo. "Priest, to
thy work !" and he dragged the weeping dame from her
refuge. " Say, once for all, will you be mine ? — for by my
halidome, that breath that uttereth thy refusal shall be thy last
on earth !"
" NE-VER ?"
" Then die !" and the sword leaped from its scabbard.
Quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning's flash,
fifty monkish habits disappeared, and fifty knights in splendid
armor stood revealed ! fifty falchions gleamed in air above the
men-at-arms, and brighter, fiercer than them all, flamed Excal-
ibur aloft, and cleaving downward struck the brutal Leonardo's
weapon from his grasp !
" A Luigi to the rescue ! Whoop !"
THE BIRTHPLACE OF HARLEQUIN.
215
" A Leonardo ! tare an onus !"
" Oh, God, Oh, God, my husband !"
"Oh, God, Oh, God, my wife!"
" My father!"
" My precious !" [Tableau.]
Count Luigi bound his usurping brother hand and foot.
The practiced knights from
Palestine made holy day sport
of carving the awkward men-
at-arms into chops and steaks.
The victory was complete.
Happiness reigned. The
knights all married the daugh
ter. Joy ! wassail ! finis !
" But what did they do with
the wicked brother ?"
" Oh nothing — only hanged
him on that iron hook I was
speaking of. By the chin."
"As how?"
"Passed it up through his
gills into his mouth."
" Leave him there ?" WICKED BROTHEU.
" Couple of years."
« Ah— is— is he dead ?"
" Six hundred and fifty years ago, or such a matter."
" Splendid legend — splendid lie — drive on."
"We reached the quaint old fortified city of Bergamo, the
renowned in history, some three-quarters of an hour before the
train was ready to start. The place has thirty or forty thou
sand inhabitants and is remarkable for being tlie birthplace
of harlequin. When we discovered that, that legend of our
driver took to itself a new interest in our eyes.
Rested and refreshed, we took the rail happy and contented.
I shall not tarry to speak of the handsome Lago di Gardi ;
its stately castle that holds in its stony bosom the secrets of
an age so remote that even tradition goeth not back to it ;
216 APPROACHING VENICE.
the imposing mountain scenery that ennobles the landscape
thereabouts ; nor yet of ancient Padua or haughty Verona ;
nor of their Montagues and Capulets, their famous balco
nies and tombs of Juliet and Romeo et a/., but hurry straight
to the ancient city of the sea, the widowed bride of the
Adriatic. It was a long, long ride. But toward evening, as
we sat silent and hardly conscious of where we were — sub
dued into that meditative calm that comes so surely after a
conversational storm — some one shouted —
" VENICE !"
And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away,
lay a great city, with its towers and domes and steeples drow
sing in a golden mist of sunset.
OHAPTEE XXII.
THIS Venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent
Republic for nearly fourteen hundred years ; whose ar
mies compelled the world's applause whenever and wherever
they battled ; whose navies well nigh held dominion of the
seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the remotest oceans
with their sails and loaded these piers with the products of
every clime, is fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy
decay. Six hundred years ago, Venice was the Autocrat of
Commerce ; her mart was the great commercial centre, the dis
tributing-house from wrhence the enormous trade of the Orient
was spread abroad over the Western world. To-day her piers
are deserted, her warehouses are empty, her merchant fleets
are vanished, her armies and her navies are but memories.
Her glory is departed, and wTith her crumbling grandeur of
wharves and palaces about her she sits among her stagnant
lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten of the world. She that
in her palmy days commanded the commerce of a hemisphere
and made the weal or woe of nations with a beck of her puis
sant finger, is become the humblest among the peoples of the
earth, — a peddler of glass beads for wromen, and trifling toys
and trinkets for school-girls and children.
The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject
for flippant speech or the idle gossipping of tourists. It seems
a sort of sacrilege to disturb the glamour of old romance that
pictures her to us softly from afar off as through a tinted mist,
and curtains her ruin and her desolation from our view. One
ought, indeed, to turn away from her rags, her poverty and
her humiliation, and tliink of her only as she was when she
218 IN SACKCLOTH AND ASHES.
sunk the fleets of Charlemagne ; when she humbled Frederick
Barbarossa or waved her victorious banners above the battle
ments of Constantinople.
We reached Yenice at eight in the evening, and entered a
hearse belonging to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate,
it was more like a hearse than any thing else, though to speak
by the card, it was a gondola. And this was the storied gon
dola of Venice ! — the fairy boat in which the princely cavaliers
of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the moon
lit canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of
patrician beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet
touched his guitar and sang as only gondoliers can sing ! This
the famed gondola and this the gorgeous gondolier ! — the one
an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-body clapped on to
the middle of it, and the other a mangy, barefooted gutter
snipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which should
have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned
a corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two
long rows of towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier
began to sing, true to the traditions of his race. I stood it a
little while. Then I said :
" Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pil
grim, and I'm a stranger, but I am not going to have my feel
ings lacerated by any such caterwauling as that. If that goes
on, one of us has got to take water. It is enough that my
cherished dreams of Yenice have been blighted forever as to
the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier ; this system
of destruction shall go no farther ; I will accept the hearse,
under protest, and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but
here I register a dark and bloody oath that you shan't sing.
Another yelp, and overboard you go."
I began to feel that the old Yenice of song and story had
departed forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we
swept gracefully out into the Grand Canal, and under the mel
low moonlight the Yenice of poetry and romance stood re
vealed. Eight from the water's edge rose long lines of stately
palaces of marble ; gondolas were gliding swiftly hither and
THE GRAND FETE BY MOONLIGHT. 219
thither and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates
and alleys; ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows
athwart the glittering waves. There was life and motion every
where, and yet everywhere there was a hush, a stealthy sort
of stillness, that was suggestive of secret enterprises of bravoes
and of lovers ; and clad half in moonbeams and half in mys
terious shadows, the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed
to have an expression about them of having an eye out for just
such enterprises as these at that same moment. Music came
floating over the waters — Venice was complete.
It was a beautiful picture — very soft and dreamy and beau
tiful. But what was this Venice to compare with the Venice
of midnight ? Kothing. There was a f&te — a grand fete in
honor of some saint who had been instrumental in checking
the cholera three hundred years ago, and all Venice was abroad
on the water. It was no common affair, for the Venetians did
not know how soon they might need the saint's services again,
now that the cholera was spreading every where. So in one
vast space — say a third of a mile wide and two miles long —
were collected two thousand gondolas, and every one of them
had from two to »ten, twenty and even thirty colored lanterns,
suspended about it, and from four to a dozen occupants. Just
as far as the eye could reach, these painted lights were massed
together — like a vast garden of many-colored flowers, except
that these blossoms were never still ; they were ceaselessly gli
ding in and out, and mingling together, and seducing you into
bewildering attempts to follow their mazy evolutions. Here
and there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a rocket that
was struggling to get away, splendidly illuminated all the boats
around it. Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents
and pyramids and circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and
lighting up the faces of the young and the sweet-scented and
lovely below, was a picture ; and the reflections of those lights,
so long, so slender, so numberless, so many-colored and so dis
torted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture likewise, and
one that was enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a party
of young ladies and gentlemen had their state gondolas hand-
220 THE GRAND FETE BY MOONLIGHT.
somely decorated, and ate supper on board, bringing their
swallow-tailed, white-cravatted varlets to wait upon them, and
having their tables tricked out as if for a bridal supper. They
had brought along the costly globe lamps from their drawing-
rooms, and the lace and silken curtains from the same places,
I suppose. And they had also brought pianos and guitars, and
they played and sang operas, while the plebeian paper-lan
terned gondolas from the suburbs and the back alleys crowded
around to stare and listen.
There was music every where — chorusses, string bands, brass
bands, flutes, every thing. I was so surrounded, walled in,
with music, magnificence and loveliness, that I became inspired
with the spirit of the scene, and sang one tune myself. Plow-
ever, when I observed that the other gondolas had sailed away,
and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard, I stopped.
DISGUSTED GONDOLIER.
The fete was magnificent. They kept it up the whole night
long, and I never enjoyed myself better than I did while it
lasted.
What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is ! Nar
row streets, vast, gloomy marble palaces, black with the cor
roding damps of centuries, and all partly submerged ; no dry
VENICE BY MOONLIGHT. 221
land visible any where, and no sidewalks worth mentioning ;
if you want to go to church, to the theatre, or to the restau
rant, you must call a gondola. It must be a paradise for crip
ples, for verily a man has no use for legs here.
For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Ar
kansas town, because of its currentless waters laving the very
doorsteps of all the houses, and the cluster of boats made fast
under the windows, or skimming in and out of the alleys and
by-ways, that I could not get rid of the impression that there
was nothing the matter here but a spring freshet, and that the
river would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty high-water
mark on the houses, and the streets full of mud and rubbish.
In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but
under the charitable moon her stained palaces are white again,
their battered sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old
city seems crowned once more with the grandeur that was hers
five hundred years ago. It is easy, then, in fancy, to people
these silent canals with plumed gallants and fair ladies — with
Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon the
rich argosies of Venetian commerce — with Othellos and Des-
demonas, with lagos and Roderigos — with noble fleets and vic
torious legions returning from the wars. In the treacherous
sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and
commerceless — forgotten and utterly insignificant. But in the
moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their glo
ries about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the
nations of the earth.
" There is a glorious city in the sea ;
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing ; and the salt-sea weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
Lead to her gates ! The path lies o'er the sea,
Invisible : and from the land we went,
As to a floating city — steering in,
And gliding up her streets, as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently — by many a dome,
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky ;
222 NOTABLE PLACES.
By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant kings;
The fronts of some, tho' time had shatter'd them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
As tho' the wealth within them had run o'er."
"What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice ? The
Bridge of Sighs, of course — and next the Church and the
Great Square of St. Mark, the Bronze Horses, and the famous
Lion of St. Mark.
We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into
the Ducal Palace first — a building which necessarily figures
largely in Venetian poetry and tradition. In the Senate
Chamber of the ancient Republic we wearied our eyes with
staring at acres of historical paintings by Tintoretto and Paul
Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the one thing
that strikes all strangers forcibly — a black square in the midst
of a gallery of portraits. In one long row, around the great
hall, were painted the portraits of the Doges of Venice (ven
erable fellows, with flowing white beards, for of the three hun
dred Senators eligible to the office, the oldest was usually
chosen Doge,) and each had its complimentary inscription
attached — till you came to the place that should have had Ma
rino Faliero's picture in it, and that was blank and black —
blank, except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that the
conspirator had died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that
pitiless inscription still staring from the walls after the unhappy
wretch had been in his grave five hundred years.
At the head of the Giant's Staircase, where Marino Faliero
was beheaded, and where the Doges were crowned in ancient
times, two small slits in the stone wall were pointed out — two
harmless, insignificant orifices that would never attract a stran
ger's attention — yet these were the terrible Lions' Mouths !
The heads were gone (knocked off by the French during their
occupation of Venice,) but these were the throats, down which
went the anonymoiis accusation, thrust in secretly at dead of
night by an enemy, that doomed many an innocent man to
walk the Bridge of Sighs and descend into the dungeon which
COUNCIL OF THREE. 223
none entered and hoped to see the sun again. This was in the
old days when the Patricians alone governed Venice — the
common herd had no vote and no voice. There were one
thousand live hundred Patricians ; from these, three hundred.
Senators were chosen ; from the Senators a Doge and a Coun
cil of Ten were selected, and by secret ballot the Ten chose
from their own number a Council of Three. All these were
Government spies, then, and every spy was under surveillance
himself — men spoke in wThispers in Venice, and no man trusted
his neighbor — not always his own brother. No man knew
who the Council of Three were — not even the Senate, not even
the Doge ; the members of that dread tribunal met at night in
a chamber to themselves, masked, and robed from head to foot
in scarlet cloaks, and did not even know each other, unless by
voice. It was their duty to judge heinous political crimes, and
from their sentence there \vas no appeal. A nod to the exe
cutioner was sufficient. The doomed man was marched down
a hall and out at a door-way into the covered Bridge of Sighs,
through it and into the dungeon and unto his death. At no
time in his transit was he visible to any save his conductor. If
a man had an enemy in those old clays, the cleverest thing he
could do was to slip a note for the Council of Three into the
Lion's mouth, saying " This man is plotting against the Gov
ernment." If the awful Three found no proof, ten to one they
would drown him anyhow, because he was a deep rascal, since
his plots were unsolvable. Masked judges and masked exe
cutioners, with unlimited power, and no appeal from their judg
ments, in that hard, cruel age, were not likely to be lenient
wit^i men they suspected yet could not convict.
"We walked through the hall of the Council of Ten, and
presently entered the infernal den of the Council of Three.
The table around which they had sat was there still, and
likewise the stations where the masked inquisitors and exe
cutioners formerly stood, frozen, upright and silent, till they re
ceived a bloody order, and then, without a word, moved off,
like the inexorable machines they were, to carry it out. The
frescoes on the walls were startlingly suited to the place. In
224 THE PRISON.
all the other saloons, the halls, the great state chambers of the
palace, the walls and ceilings were bright with gilding, rich
with elaborate carving, and resplendent with gallant pictures
of Venetian victories in war, and Yenetian display in foreign
courts, and hallowed with portraits of the Virgin, the Saviour
of men, and the holy saints that preached the Gospel of Peace
upon earth — but here, in dismal contrast, were none but pic
tures of death and dreadful suffering ! — not a living figure but
was writhing in torture, not a dead one but was smeared w^ith
blood, gashed with wounds, and distorted with the agonies
that had taken away its life !
From the palace to the gloomy prison is but a step — one
might almost jump across the narrow canal that intervenes.
The ponderous stone Bridge of Sighs crosses it at the second
story — a bridge that is a covered tunnel — you can -not be seen
when you walk in it. It is partitioned lengthwise, and through
one compartment walked such as bore light sentences in an
cient times, and through the other marched sadly the wretches
whom the Three had doomed to lingering misery and utter
oblivion in the dungeons, or to sudden and mysterious death.
Down below the level of the water, by the light of smoking
torches, we were shown the damp, thick-walled cells where
many a proud patrician's life was eaten away by the long-
drawn miseries of solitary imprisonment — without light, air,
books ; naked, unshaven, uncombed, covered with vermin ; his
useless tongue forgetting its office, with none to speak to ; the
days and nights of his life no longer marked, but merged into
one eternal eventless night ; far away from all cheerful sounds,
buried in the silence of a tomb ; forgotten by his helpless
friends, and his fate a dark mystery to them forever ; losing his
own memory at last, and knowing no more who he was or how he
came there ; devouring the loaf of bread and drinking the wa
ter that were thrust into the cell by unseen hands, and troubling
his worn spirit no more with hopes and fears and doubts and
longings to be free ; ceasing to scratch vain prayers and com
plainings on walls where none, not even himself, could see
them, and resigning himself to hopeless apathy, driveling child-
IMPLEMENTS OF TORTURE. 225
ishness, lunacy ! Many and many a sorrowful story like this
these stony walls could tell if they could but speak.
In a little narrow corridor, near by, they showed us where
many a prisoner, after lying in the dungeons until he was for
gotten by all save his persecutors, was brought by masked exe
cutioners and garroted, or sewed up in a sack, passed through
a little window to a boat, at dead of night, and taken to some
remote spot and drowned.
They used to show to visitors the implements of torture where
with the Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused-
villainous machines for crushing thumbs ; the stocks where a
prisoner sat immovable while water fell drop by drop upon his
head till the torture was more than humanity could bear ; and
a devilish contrivance of steel, which inclosed a prisoner's head
like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a screw. It
bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its joints
long ago, and on one side it had a projection whereon the tor
turer rested his elbow comfortably and bent down his ear to
catch the moanings of the sufferer perishing within.
Of course we went to see the venerable relic of the ancient
glory of Venice, with its pavements worn and broken by the
passing feet of a thousand years of plebeians and patricians — The
Cathedral of St. Mark. It is built entirely of precious marbles,
brought from the Orient — nothing in its composition is domestic.
Its hoary traditions make it an object of absorbing interest to
even the most careless stranger, and thus far it had interest for
me ; but no further. I could not go into ecstacies over its
coarse mosaics, its unlovely Byzantine architecture, or its five
hundred curious interior columns from as many distant quarries.
Every thing was worn out — every block of stone was smooth
and almost shapeless with the polishing hands and shoulders
of loungers who devoutly idled here in by-gone centuries and
have died and gone to the dev — no, simply died, I mean.
Under the altar repose the ashes of St. Mark — and Matthew,
Luke and John, too, for all I know. Venice reveres those rel
ics above all things earthly. For fourteen hundred years St.
Mark has been her patron saint. Every thing about the city
15
226
THE GLORY OF VENICE.
seems to be named after him or so named as to refer to him in
some way — so named, or some purchase rigged in some way to
scrape a sort of hurrahing acquaintance with him. That seems
to be the idea. To be on good terms with St. Mark, seems to
be the very summit of Venetian ambition. They say St. Mark
had a tame lion, and used to travel with him — and every where
THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. MAKK S.
that St. Mark went, the lion was sure to go. It was his pro
tector, his friend, his librarian. And so the Winged Lion of
St. Mark, with the open Bible under his paw, is a favorite em
blem in the grand old city. It casts its shadow from the most
ancient pillar in Venice, in the Grand Square of St. Mark,
upon the throngs of free citizens below, and has so done for
many a long century. The winged lion is found every where —
and doubtless here, where the winged lion is, no harm can
come.
A TREASURE SECURED. 227
St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was martyred,
I think. However, that has nothing to do with my legend.
About the founding of the city of Venice — say four hundred
and fifty years after Christ — (for Venice is much "younger than
any other Italian city,) a priest dreamed that an angel told him
that until the remains of St. Mark were brought to Venice,
the city could never rise to high distinction among the nations ;
that the body must be captured, brought to the city, and a
magnificent church built over it ; and that if ever the Vene
tians allowed the Saint to be removed from his new resting-
place, in that day Venice would perish from off the face of the
the earth. The priest proclaimed his dream, and forthwith
Venice set about procuring the corpse of St. Mark. One ex
pedition after another tried and failed, but the project was
never abandoned during four hundred years. At last it was
secured by stratagem, in the year eight hundred and something.
The commander of a Venetian expedition disguised himself,
stole the bones, separated them, and packed them in vessels
filled with lard. The religion of Mahomet causes its devotees
to abhor anything that is in the nature of pork, and so when
the Christian was stopped by the officers at the gates of the city,
they only glanced once into his precious baskets, then turned
up their noses at the unholy lard, and let him go. The bones
were buried in the vaults of the grand cathedral, which had
been waiting long years to receive them, and thus the safety
and the greatness of Venice were secured. And to this day
there be those in Venice who believe that if those holy ashes
were stolen away, the ancient city would vanish like a dream,
and its foundations be buried forever in the unremembering
sea.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE Venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its
gliding movement, as a serpent. It is twenty or thirty
feet long, and is narrow and deep, like a canoe ; its sharp
bow and stern sweep upward from the water like the horns
of a crescent with the abruptness of the curve slightly modi
fied.
The bow is ornamented with a steel comb with a battle-ax
attachment which threatens to cut passing boats in two occa
sionally, but never does. The gondola is painted black be
cause in the zenith of Venetian magnificence the gondolas be
came too gorgeous altogether, and the Senate decreed that all
such display must cease, and a solemn, unembellished black be
substituted. If the truth were known, it would doubtless
appear that rich plebeians grew too prominent in their affec
tation of patrician show on the Grand Canal, and required a
wholesome snubbing. Reverence for the hallowed Past and
its traditions keeps the dismal fashion in force now that the
compulsion exists no longer. So let it remain. It is the
color of mourning. Venice mourns. The stern of the boat
is decked over and the gondolier stands there. He uses a
single oar — a long blade, of course, for he stands nearly erect.
A wooden peg, a foot and a half high, with two slight crooks
or curves in one side of it and one in the other, projects above
the starboard gunwale. Against that peg the gondolier takes
a purchase with his oar, changing it at intervals to the other
side of the peg or dropping it into another of the crooks, as
the steering of the craft may demand — and how in the world
GONDOLIZING. 229
he can back and fill, slioot straight ahead, or flirt suddenly
around a corner, and make the oar stay in those insignificant
notches, is a problem to me and a never diminishing matter
of interest. I am afraid I study the gondo
lier's marvelous skill more than I do the
sculptured palaces we glide among. lie
cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or
misses another gondola by «uch an imper
ceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself
" scrooching," as the children say, just as
one does when a buggy wheel grazes his
elbow. But he makes all his calculations
PEG.
with the nicest precision, and goes darting
in and out among a Broadway confusion of busy craft w^ith
the easy confidence of the educated hackman. He never
makes a mistake.
Sometimes we go flying down the great canals at such a gait
that we can get only the merest glimpses into front doors, and
again, in obscure alleys in. the suburbs, we put on a solemnity
suited to the silence, the mildew, the stagnant waters, the
clinging weeds, the deserted houses and the general lifeless-
ness of the place, and move to the spirit of grave medita
tion.
The gondolier is a picturesque rascal for all he wears no
satin harness, no plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His atti
tude is stately ; he is lithe and supple ; all his movements are
full of grace. When his long canoe, and his fine figure, tow
ering from its high perch on the stern, are cut against the
evening sky, they make a picture that is very novel and strik
ing to a foreign eye.
We sit in the cushioned carriage-body of a cabin, with the
curtains drawn, and smoke, or read, or look out upon the pass
ing boats, the houses, the bridges, the people, and enjoy our
selves much more than we could in a buggy jolting over our
cobble-stone pavements at home. This is the gentlest, pleas-
antest locomotion wre have ever known.
But it seems queer — ever so queer — to see a boat doing
230 GONDOLIZING.
duty as a private carriage. We see business men come to the
front door, step into a gondola, instead of a street car, and go
off down town to the counting-room.
We see visiting young ladies stand on the stoop, and laugh,
and kiss good-bye, and flirt their fans and say " Come soon —
" GOOD-BYE.
now do — you've been just as mean as ever you can be —
mother's dying to see you — and we've moved into the new
house, O such a love of a place ! — so convenient to the post-
office and the church, and the Young Men's Christian Asso
ciation ; and we do have such fishing, and such carrying on,
SHOPPING BY WATER. 231
and such swimming-matches in the back yard — Oh, you must
come — no distance at all, and if you go down through by St.
Mark's and the Bridge of Sighs, and cut through the alley and
come up by the church of Santa Maria dei Frari, and into the
Grand Canal, there isn't a bit of current — now do come, Sally
Maria — by-bye !" and then the little humbug trips down the
steps, jumps into the gondola, says, under her breath, " Disa
greeable old thing, I hope she ivorftf" goes skimming away,
round the corner ; and the other girl slams the street door and
says, " Well, that infliction's over, any way, — but I suppose
I've got to go and see her — tiresome stuck-up thing !" Hu
man nature appears to be just the same, all over the world.
We see the diffident young man, mild of moustache, affluent
of hair, indigent of brain, elegant of costume, drive up to her
father's mansion, tell his hackman to bail out and wait, start
fearfully up the steps and meet " the old gentleman " right on
the threshold ! — hear him ask what street the new British
Bank is in — as if that were what he came for — and then
bounce into his boat and skurry away with his coward heart
in his boots ! — see him come sneaking around" the corner
again, directly, with a crack of the curtain open toward the
old gentleman's disappearing gondola, and out scampers his
Susan with a flock of little Italian endearments fluttering
from her lips, and goes to drive with him in the watery
avenues down toward the Rialto.
"We see the ladies go out shopping, in the most natural way,
and flit from street to street and from store to store, just in
the good old fashion, except that they leave the gondola, in
stead of a private carriage, waiting at the curbstone a couple of
hours for them, — waiting while they make the nice young
clerks pull down tons and tons of silks and velvets and moire
antiques and those things ; and then they buy a paper of pins
and go paddling away to confer the rest of their disastrous
patronage on some other firm. And they always have their
purchases sent home just in the good old way. Human na
ture is very much the same all over the world ; and it is so
like my dear native home to see a Venetian lady go into a
232 GAIETIES BY GASLIGHT.
store and buy ten cents' worth of blue ribbon and have it sent
Lome in a scow. Ah, it is these little touches of nature that
move one to tears in these far-off foreign lands.
"We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their
nurses, for an airing. "We see staid families, with prayer-book
and beads, enter the gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and
float away to church. And at midnight we see the theatre
break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious youth and
beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and
behold the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black
multitude of boats go skimming down the moonlit avenues;
we see them separate here and there, and disappear up diver
gent streets ; we hear the faint sounds of laughter and of
shouted farewells floating up out of the distance ; and then,
the strange pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of
glittering water — of stately buildings — of blotting shadows — •
of weird stone faces creeping into the moonlight — of deserted
bridges — of motionless boats at anchor. And over all broods
that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that befits so well
this old dreaming Venice.
We have been pretty much every where in our gondola.
"We have bought beads and photographs in the stores, and wax
matches in the Great Square of St. Mark. The last remark
suggests a digression. Every body goes to this vast square in
the evening. The military bands play in the centre of it and
countless couples of ladies and gentlemen promenade up and
down on either side, and platoons of them are constantly
drifting away toward the old Cathedral, and by the venerable
column with the Winged Lion of St. Mark on its top, and out
to where the boats lie moored ; and other platoons are as con
stantly arriving from the gondolas and joining the great
throng. Between the promenaders and the side-walks are
seated hundreds and hundreds of people at small tables,
smoking and taking granita, (a first cousin to ice-cream ;) on
the side-walks are more employing themselves in the same
way. The shops in the first floor of the tall rows of buildings
that wall in three sides of the square are brilliantly lighted,
AMERICAN SNOBS ABROAD. 233
the air is filled with music and merry voices, and altogether
the scene is as bright and spirited and full of cheerfulness as
any man could desire. We enjoy it thoroughly. Very many
of the young women are exceedingly pretty and dress with
rare good taste. We are gradually and laboriously learning
the ill-manners of staring them unflinchingly in the face — not
because such conduct is agreeable to us, but because it is the
custom of the country and they say the girls like it. We wish
to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different
countries, so that we can " show off" and astonish people
when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our un-
traveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we
can't shake off. All our passengers are paying strict atten
tion to this thing, with the end in ' view which I have
mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never know
what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.
I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle
reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a con
summate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and
extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him
brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after mv own
V «/
heart when I shall have finished my travels.
On this subject let me remark that there are Americans
abroad in Italy who have actually forgotten their mother
tongue in three months — forgot it in France. They can not
even write their address in English in a hotel register. I ap
pend these evidences, which I copied verbatim from the regis
ter of a hotel in a certain Italian city :
"John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis.
" Wm. L. Ainsworth, travaitteur (he meant traveler, I suppose,) Etats Unis.
" George P. Morton et fils, <T Amerique.
" Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, mile de Boston, Amerique.
" J. Ellsworth Baker, taut de suite de France, place de naissance Amerique, desti
nation la Grand Bretagne."
I love this sort of people. A lady passenger of ours tells
of a fellow-citizen of hers who spent eight weeks in Paris and
then returned home and addressed his dearest old bosom
234
AMERICAN SNOBS AT HOME.
friend Herbert as Mr. " Er-bare !" He apologized, though,
and said, " 'Pon my soul it is aggravating, but I cahn't help it
— I have got so used to speaking nothing but French, my dear
Erbare — damme there it goes again ! — got so used to French
pronunciation that I cahn't get rid of it — it is positively an
noying, I assure you." This entertaining idiot, whose name
was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed three times in the
street before he paid any attention, and then begged a thou
sand pardons and said he had grown so accustomed to hearing
himself addressed as M'sieu Qor-r-dong" with a roll to the r,
that he had forgotten the legitimate
sound of his name ! He wore a rose
in his button-hole ; he gave the French
salutation — two flips of the hand in
front of the face ; he called Paris Pair-
ree in ordinary English conversation ;
he carried envelopes bearing foreign
postmarks protruding from his breast
pocket ; he cultivated a moustache and
imperial, and did what else he could to
suggest to the beholder his pet fancy
that he resembled Louis JSTapoleon —
and in a spirit of thankfulness which is
entirely unaccountable, considering the
slim foundation there was for it, he
praised his Maker that he was as he
was, and went on enjoying his little
life just the same as if he really had
been deliberately designed and erected by the great Architect
of the Universe.
Think of our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our
Williamses writing themselves down in dilapidated French
in foreign hotel registers ! We laugh at Englishmen, when
we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to their national ways
and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad very forgiv
ingly. It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his
nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is
M'SIEU GOR-R-DONG.
SEEING THE SIGHTS. 235
pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither
male nor female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl — a poor, miser
able, hermaphrodite Frenchman !
Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such
tilings, visited by us in Venice, I shall mention only one — the
church of Santa Maria dei Frari. It is about five hundred
years old, I believe, and stands on twelve hundred thousand
piles. In it lie the body of Canova and the heart of Titian,
under magnificent monuments. Titian died at the age of
almost one hundred years. A plague which swept away fifty
thousand lives was raging at the time, and there is notable
evidence of the reverence in which the great painter was
held, in the fact that to him alone the state permitted a public
funeral in all that season of terror and death.
In this church, also, is a monument to the doge Foscari,
whose name a once resident of Venice, Lord Byron, has made
permanently famous.
The monument to the doge Giovanni Pesaro, in this church,
is a curiosity in the way of mortuary adornment. It is eighty
feet high and is fronted like some fantastic pagan temple.
Against it stand four colossal Nubians, as black as night,
dressed in white marble garments. The black legs are bare,
and through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of
shiny black marble, shows. The artist was as ingenious as
his funeral designs were absurd. There are two bronze skele
tons bearing scrolls, and two great dragons uphold the sar
cophagus. On high, amid all this grotesqueness, sits the de
parted doge.
In the conventual buildings attached to this church are the
Btdte archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they
are said to number millions of documents. " They are the
records of centuries of the most watchful, observant and sus
picious government that ever existed — in which every thing
was written down and nothing spoken out." They fill nearly
three hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts from the
archives of nearly two thousand families, monasteries and
convents. The secret history of Venice for a thousand years
236
SEEING THE SIGHTS.
is here — its plots, its hidden trials, its assassinations, its com
missions of hireling spies and masked bravoes — food, ready to
hand, for a world of dark and mysterious romances.
Yes, I think we have seen all of Venice. We have seen, in
these old churches, a profusion of costly and elaborate
sepulchre ornamentation such
as we never dreampt of before.
We have stood in the dim re
ligious light of these hoary
sanctuaries, in the midst of
long ranks of dusty monu
ments and effigies of the great
dead of Venice, until we
seemed drifting back, back,
back, into the solemn past,
and looking upon the scenes
and mingling with the peoples
of a remote antiquity. We
have been in a half-waking
sort of dream all the time. I
do not know how else to de
scribe the feeling. A part of
our being has remained still
in the nineteenth century,
while another part of it has
seemed in some unaccountable
way walking among the phan
toms of the tenth.
We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with
looking at them and refuse to find interest in them any longer.
And what wonder, when there are twelve hundred pictures by
Palma the Younger in Venice and fifteen hundred by Tintor
etto ? And behold there are Titians and the works of other
artists in proportion. We have seen Titian's celebrated Cain
and Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham's Sacrifice.
We have seen Tintoretto's monster picture, which is seventy-
four feet long and I do not know how many feet high, and
MONUMENT TO THE DOGE.
A CONFESSION. 237
thought it a very commodious picture. We have seen pictures
of martyrs enough, and saints enough, to regenerate the
world. I ought not to confess it, but still, since one has no
opportunity in America to acquire a critical judgment in art,
and since I could not hope to become educated in it in Europe
in a few short weeks, I may therefore as wrell acknowledge
with such apologies as may be due, that to me it seemed that
when I had seen one of these martyrs I had seen them all.
They all have a marked family resemblance to each other, they
dress alike, in coarse monkish robes and sandals, they are all
bald headed, they all stand in about the same attitude, and
without exception they are gazing heavenward with counte
nances which the Ainsworths, the Mortons and the Williamses,
et fils, inform me are full of " expression." To me there
is nothing tangible about these imaginary portraits, nothing
that I can grasp and take a living interest in. If great Titian
had only been gifted with prophecy, and had skipped a martyr,
and gone over to England and painted a portrait of Shaks-
peare, even as a youth, which we could all have confidence in
now, the world down to the latest generations would have for
given him the lost martyr in the rescued seer. I think pos
terity could have spared one more martyr for the sake of a
great historical picture of Titian's time and painted by his
brush — such as Columbus returning in chains from the dis
covery of a world, for instance. The old masters did paint
some Venetian historical pictures, and these we did not tire of
looking at, notwithstanding representations of the formal intro
duction of defunct doges to the Virgin Mary in regions beyond
the clouds clashed rather harshly writh the proprieties, it
seemed to us.
But humble as we are, and unpretending, in the matter of
art, our researches among the painted monks and martyrs
have not been wholly in vain. We have striven hard to learn.
We have had some success. We have mastered some things,
possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the learned, but to
us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our little
acquirements as do others who have learned far more, and we
238
LEARNING THE RUDIMENTS.
ST. MARK, BY THE OLD MASTERS.
love to display them full as well. When we see a monk going
about with a lion and look
ing tranquilly up to heaven,
we know that that is St.
Mark. When we see a monk
with a book and a pen, look
ing tranquilly up to heaven,
trying to think of a word, we
know that that is St. Mat
thew. When we1 see a monk
sitting on a rock, looking
tranquilly up to heaven, with
a human skull beside him,
and without other baggage,
we know that that is St. Jer
ome. Because we know that
he always went flying light in
the matter of baggage.
When we see a party looking
tranquilly up to heaven, un
conscious that his body is shot
through and through with ar
rows, we know that that is
St. Sebastian. When we see
other monks looking tranquil
ly up to heaven, but having no
trade-mark, we always ask
who those parties are. We
do this because we humbly
wish to learn. We have seen
thirteen thousand St. Jeromes,
and twenty-two thousand St.
Marks, and sixteen thousand
St. Matthews, and sixty
thousand St. Sebastians, and
four millions of assorted
monks, undesignated, and we
ST. JEROME, BY THE OLD MASTEBS.
ST. MATTHEW, BY THE OLD MASTERS.
EXPLANATION.
239
larger
experience, we
ST. SEBASTIAN, BY THE OLD MASTERS.
feel encouraged to believe that when we have seen some more
of these various pictures, and had
shall begin to take an absorbing
interest in them like our cul
tivated countrymen from
Amerique.
Xow it does give me real pain
to speak in this almost unappre-
ciative way of the old masters
and their martyrs, because good
friends of mine in the ship-
friends who do thoroughly and
conscientiously appreciate them
and are in every way competent
to discriminate between good
pictures and inferior ones — have
urged me for my own sake not
to make public the fact that I
lack this appreciation and this
critical discrimination myself.
I believe that what I have writ
ten and may still write about
pictures will give them pain, and
I am honestly sorry for it. I
even promised that I would
hide my uncouth sentiments in
my own breast. But alas! I
never could keep a promise. I
do not blame myself for this
weakness, because the fault
must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a
very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which
enables me to make promises, that the organ which should
enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not.
I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty
nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.
I certainly meant to keep that promise, but I find I can not do
ST. UNKNOWN, BY THE OLD MASTERS.
24:0 THE "RENAISSANCE" BOTHER.
it. It is impossible to travel through Italy without speaking
of pictures, and can I see them through others' eyes ?
If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread
before me every day of my life by that monarch of all the
old masters, ^Nature, I should come to believe, sometimes, that
I had in me no appreciation of the beautiful, whatsoever.
It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once
I have discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and
worthy of all praise, the pleasure it gives me is an infallible
proof that it is not a beautiful picture and not in any wise
worthy of commendation. This very thing has occurred
more times than I can mention, in Yenice. In every single
instance the guide has crushed out my swelling enthusiasm
with the remark :
" It is nothing — it is of the Renaissance"
I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was,
and so always I had to simply say,
" Ah ! so it is — I had not observed it before."
I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro,
the offspring of a South Carolina slave. But it occurred too
often for even my self-complacency, did that exasperating " It
is nothing — it is of the Renaissance." I said at last :
" Who is tins Renaissance? Where did he come from?
Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his
execrable daubs ?"
We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man ; that
renaissance was a term used to signify what was at best but an
imperfect rejuvenation of art. The guide said that after
Titian's time and the time of the other great names we had
grown so familiar with, high art declined ; then it partially
rose again — an inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these
shabby pictures were the work of their hands. Then I said,
in my heat, that I " wished to goodness high art had declined
five hundred years sooner." The Renaissance pictures suit me
very well, though sooth to say its school were too much given
to painting real men and did not indulge enough in martyrs.
The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had
CONTRABAND GUIDE.
yet who knew any thing,
slave parents.
They came to
Venice while
he was an in
fant. He has
grown up here.
He is well ed
ucated, lie
reads, writes,
and speaks
English, Ital
ian, Spanish,
and French,
with perfect fa
cility ; is a
worshipper of
art and thor
oughly conver
sant with it;
knows the his
tory of Venice
by heart and
never tires of
talking of her
illustrious ca
reer. He dress
es better than
any of us, I
think, and is
daintily polite.
Negroes are
deemed as
good as white
people, in Ven
ice, and so this
man feels no
He was born in South Carolina, of
242 THE CONSPIRACY.
desire to go back to his native land. His judgment is cor
rect.
I have had another shave. I was writing in our front room
this afternoon and trying hard to keep my attention on my
work and refrain from looking out upon the canal. I was
resisting the soft influences of the climate as well as I could,
and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent and
happy. The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I
would be shaved. I reminded them of my tortures in Genoa,
Milan, Como ; of my declaration that I would suffer no more
on Italian soil. I said " Not any for me, if you please."
I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard him
say:
" Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the
ship."
He said again, presently :
" Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving
him."
Dan took the chair. Then he said :
" "Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters."
I wrote on. Directly Dan said :
" Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship's barber isn't any
thing to him."
My rough beard was distressing me beyond measure. The
barber was rolling up his apparatus. The temptation was too
strong. I said :
" Hold on, please. Shave me also."
I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber
soaped my face, and then took his razor and gave me a rake
that well nigh threw me into convulsions. I jumped out of
the chair : Dan and the doctor were both wiping blood off
their faces and laughing.
I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud.
They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond
anything they had ever experienced before, that they could not
bear the idea of losing such a chance of hearing a cordial
opinion from me on the subject.
MOVING AGAIN. 243
It was shameful. But there was no help for it. The skin
ning was begun and had to be finished. The tears flowed
with every rake, and so did the fervent execrations. The
barber grew confused, and brought blood every time. I think
the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen or
heard since they left home.
We have seen the Campanile, and Byron's house and Bal-
bi's the geographer, and the palaces of all the ancient dukes
and doges of Venice, and we have seen their effeminate de
scendants airing their nobility in fashionable French attire
in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating ices and drink
ing cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail and
destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors did in the
days of Venetian glory. We have seen no bravoes with pois
oned stilettos, no masks, no wild carnival ; but we have seen
the ancient pride of Venice, the grim Bronze Horses that
figure in a thousand legends. Venice may well cherish them,
for they are the only horses she ever had. It is said there are
hundreds of people in this curious city who never have seen a
living horse in their lives. It is entirely true, no doubt.
And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow,
and leave the venerable Queen of the Republics to summon
her vanished ships, and marshal her shadowy armies, and
know again in dreams the pride of her old renown.
CHAPTER XXIV.
SOME of the Quaker City's passengers had arrived in Yen-
ice from Switzerland and other lands before we left
there, and others were expected every day. We heard of no
casualties among them, and 110 sickness.
We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we
rattled through a good deal of country by rail without caring
to stop. I took few notes. I find no mention of Bologna in
my memorandum book, except that we arrived there in good
season, but saw none of the sausages for which the place is so
justly celebrated.
Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.
Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated
the great figure of David in the grand square, and the sculp
tured group they call the Rape of the Sabines. We wandered
through the endless collections of paintings and statues of the
Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make that statement
in self-defense ; there let it stop. I could not rest under the im
putation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary
miles of picture galleries. We tried indolently to recollect
something about the Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other his
torical cut-throats whose quarrels and assassinations make up
so large a share of Florentine history, but the subject was not
attractive. We had been robbed of all the fine mountain
scenery on our little journey by a system of railroading that
had three miles of tunnel to a hundred yards of daylight, and
we were not inclined to be sociable with Florence. We had
seen the spot, outside the city somewhere, where these people
TOMB OF GALILEO.
245
had allowed the bones of Galileo to rest in unconsecrated
ground for an age because his great discovery that the world
turned around was regarded as a damning heresy by the
church ; and we know that long after the world had accepted
his theory and raised his name high in the list of its great
men, they had still let him rot there. That we had lived to
see his dust in honored sepulture in the church of Santa Croce
we owed to a society of literati, and not to Florence or her
rulers. We saw Dant6's tomb in that church, also, but we
were glad to know that his body was not in it ; that the un
grateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would
give much to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure
that high honor to herself. Medicis are good enough for Flor
ence. Let her plant Medicis and build grand monuments
over them to testify how gratefully she was wont to lick the
hand that scourged her.
FLORENCE.
Magnanimous Florence ! Her jewrelry marts are filled
with artists in mosaic. Florentine mosaics are the choicest in
all the world. Florence loves to have that said. Florence is
246
DAZZLING GENEROSITY.
proud of it. Florence would foster this specialty of hers.
She is grateful to the artists that bring to her this high credit
and fill her coffers with foreign money, and so she encourages
them with pensions. "With pensions ! Think of the lavish-
ness of it. She knows that
people who piece together
the beautiful trifles die
early, because the labor is
so confining, and so ex
hausting to hand and brain,
and so she has decreed that
all these people who reach
the age of sixty shall have
a pension after that ! I
have not heard that any of
them have called for their
dividends yet. One man
did fight along till he was
sixty, and started after his
pension, but it appeared
that there had been a mis
take of a year in his fam
ily record, and so he gave
it up and died.
These artists will take particles of stone or glass no larger
than a mustard seed, and piece them together on a sleeve but
ton or a shirt stud, so smoothly and with such nice adjust
ment of the delicate shades of color the pieces bear, as to
form a pigmy rose with stem, thorn, leaves, petals complete,
and all as softly and as truthfully tinted as though Nature had
builded it herself. They will counterfeit a fly, or a high-
toned bug, or the ruined Coliseum, within the cramped circle
of a breastpin, and do it so deftly and so neatly that any man
might think a master painted it.
I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence —
a little trifle of a centre table — whose top was made of some
sort of precious polished stone, and in the stone was inlaid the
THE PENSIONER.
WONDERFUL MOSAICS. 24:7
figure of a flute, with bell-mouth and a mazy complication of
keys. No painting in the world could have been softer or
richer ; no shading out of one tint into another could have
been more perfect; no work of art of any kind could have
been more faultless than this flute, and yet to count the multi
tude of little fragments of stone of which they swore it was
formed would bankrupt any man's arithmetic ! I do not
think one could have seen where two particles joined each
other with eyes of ordinary shrewdness. Certainly we could
detect no such blemish. This table-top cost the labor of one
man for ten long years, so they said, and it was for sale for
thirty-five thousand dollars.
We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time,
in Florence, to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo,
Raphael and Machiavelli, (I 'suppose they are buried there,
but it may be that they reside elsewhere and rent their tombs
to other parties — such being the fashion in Italy,) and between
times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the
Arno. It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great his
torical creek with four feet in the channel and some scows
floating around. It would be a very plausible river if they
would pump some water into it. They all call it a river, and
they honestly think it is a river, do these dark and bloody
Florentines. They even help out the delusion by building
bridges over it. I do not see why they are too good to
wade.
How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with
bitter prejudices sometimes ! I might enter Florence under
happier auspices a month hence and find it all beautiful, all
attractive. But I do not care to think of it now, at all, nor
of its roomy shops filled to the ceiling with snowy marble and
alabaster copies of all the celebrated sculptures in Europe —
copies so enchanting to the eye that I wonder how they can
really be shaped like the dingy petrified nightmares they are
the portraits of. I got lost in Florence at nine o'clock, one
night, and staid lost in that labyrinth of narrow streets and
long rows of vast buildings that look all alike, until toward
218
LOST AGAIN.
three o'clock in the morning. It was a pleasant night and at
first there were a good many people abroad, and there were
cheerful lights about. Later, I grew accustomed to prowling
about mysterious drifts and tunnels and astonishing and inter
esting myself with coming around corners expecting to find
the hotel staring me in the face, and not finding it doing any
thins; of the kind. Later still, I felt tired. I soon felt re-
^j1
markably tired. But there was no one abroad, now — not even
a policeman. I walked till I was out of all patience, and very
hot and thirsty. At last, somewhere after one o'clock, I
came unexpectedly to one of the city gates. I knew then that
I was very far from the hotel. The soldiers thought I wanted
to leave the city, and they sprang up and barred the way with
their muskets. I said :
I WANT TO GO HOME.
" Hotel d'Europe!"
It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether
that was Italian or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at
BY ACCIDENT. 219
each other and at me, and shook their heads and took me into
custody. I said I wanted to go home. They did not under
stand me. They took me into the guard-house and searched
me, but they found no sedition on me. They found a small
piece of soap (we carry soap with us, now,) and I made them
a present of it, seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity. I
continued to say Hotel d'Europe, and they continued to shako
their heads, until at last a young soldier nodding in the cor
ner roused up and said something. He said he knew where
the hotel was, I suppose, for the officer of the guard sent him
away with me. We walked a hundred or a hundred and fifty
miles, it appeared to me, and then he got lost. He turned
this way and that, and finally gave it up and signified that he
was going to spend the remainder of the morning trying to
find the city gate again. At that moment it struck me that
there was something familiar about the house over the way.
It was the hotel !
It was a happy thing for me that there happened to be a
soldier there that knew even as much as he did ; for they say
that the policy of the government is to change the soldiery
from one place to another constantly and from country to
city, so that they can not become acquainted with the people
and growr lax in their duties and enter into plots and conspir
acies with friends. My experiences of Florence were chiefly
unpleasant. I will change the subject.
At Pisa we climbed up to the top of the strangest structure
the world has any knowledge of — the Leaning Tower. As
every one knows, it is in the neighborhood of one hundred
and eighty feet high — and I beg to observe that one hundred
and eighty feet reach to about the Light of four ordinary three-
story buildings piled one on top of the other, and is a very
considerable altitude for a tower of uniform thickness to aspire
to, even when it stands upright — yet this one leans more than
thirteen feet out of the perpendicular. It is seven hundred
years old, but neither history or tradition say whether it was
built as it is, purposely, or whether one of its sides has settled.
There is no record that it ever stoud straight up. It is built
THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA.
of marble. It is an airy and a beautiful structure, and each
of its eight stories is encircled by fluted columns, some of
LEANING TOWER.
marble and some of granite, with Corinthian capitals that
were handsome when they were new. It is a bell tower, and
in its top hangs a chime of ancient bells. The winding stair
case within is dark, but one always knows which side of the
tower he is on because of his naturally gravitating from one
side to the other of the staircase with the rise or dip of the
tower. Some of the stone steps are foot-worn only on one
end ; others only on the other end ; others only in the middle.
To look down into the tower from the top is like looking
down into a tilted well. A rope that hangs from the centre
THE ANCIENT DUOMO. 251
of the top touches the wall before it reaches the bottom. Stand
ing on the summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable
when he looks down from the high side ; but to crawl on your
breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your
neck out far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your
flesh creep, and convinces you for a single moment in spite of
all your philosophy, that the building is falling. You handle
yourself very carefully, all the time, under the silly impres
sion that if it is not falling, your trifling weight will start it
unless you are particular not to " bear down " on it.
The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in
Europe. It is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has out
lived the high commercial prosperity and the political import
ance that made it a necessity, or rather a possibility. Sur
rounded by poverty, decay and ruin, it conveys to us a more
tangible impression of the former greatness of Pisa than books
could give us.
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning
Tower, is a stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a
costly structure. In it hangs the lamp whose measured swing
suggested to Galileo the pendulum. It looked an insignifi
cant thing to have conferred upon the -world of science and
mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it
has. Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a
crazy universe of swinging disks, the toiling children of this
sedate parent. He appeared to have an intelligent expression
about him of knowing that he was not a lamp at all ; that he
was a Pendulum ; a pendulum disguised, for prodigious and
inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and not a com
mon pendulum either, but the old original patriarchal Pendu
lum — the Abraham Pendulum of the world.
This Baptistery is endowed with the most pleasing echo of
all the echoes wre have read of. The guide sounded two so
norous notes, about half an octave apart ; the echo answered
with the most enchanting, the most melodious, the richest
blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It was like
a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by
252 A NEW HOLY SEPULCHRE.
distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this be
the case my ear is to blame — not my pen. I am describing a
memory — and one that will remain long with me.
The peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time, which
placed a higher confidence in outward forms of worship than
in the watchful guarding of tke heart against sinful thoughts
and the hands against sinful deeds, and which believed in the
protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy by contact
with holy things, is illustrated in a striking manner in one of
the cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought
in ships from the Holy Land ages ago. To be buried in such
ground was regarded by the ancient Pisans as being more
potent for salvation than many masses purchased of the
church and the vowing of many candles to the Virgin.
Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It
was one of the twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that
commonwealth which has left so many monuments in testi
mony of its extraordinary advancement, and so little history
of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A Pisan anti
quarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full
four thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of
one of the oldest of the Etruscan cities. He said it came from
a tomb, and Avas used by some bereaved family in that remote
age when even the Pyramids of Egypt were young, Damas
cus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and ancient Troy
not yet dreampt of, to receive the tears wept for some lost idol
of a household. It spoke to us in a language of its own ; and
with a pathos more tender than any words might bring, its
mute eloquence swept down the long roll of the centuries
with its tale of a vacant chair, a familiar footstep missed from
the threshold, a pleasant voice gone from the chorus, a van
ished form ! — a tale which' is always so new to us, so startling,
so terrible, so benumbing to the senses, and behold how
threadbare and old it is ! No shrewdly-worded history could
have brought the myths and shadows of that old drea.r.y age
before us clothed with human flesh and warmed with human
sympathies so vividly as did this poor little unsentient vessel
of pottery.
A FALLEN REPUBLIC. 253
Pisa was a republic in the middle ages? with a government
of her own, armies and navies of her own and a great com
merce. She was a warlike power, and inscribed upon her
banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese and Turks. It
is said that the city once numbered a population of four hun
dred thousand ; but her sceptre has passed from her grasp,
now, her ships and her armies are gone, her commerce is dead.
Her battle-nags bear the mold and the dust of centuries,
her marts are deserted, she has shrunken far within her
crumbling walls, and her great population has diminished to
twenty thousand souls. She has but one thing left to boast
of, and that is not much, viz : she is the second city of Tus
cany.
We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of
it long before the city gates were closed for the evening, and
then came on board the ship.
We felt as though we had been away from home an age. ^VVe
never entirely appreciated, before, what a very pleasant den
our state-room is ; nor how jolly it is to sit at dinner in one's
own seat in one's own cabin, and hold familiar conversation
with friends in one's own language. Oh, the rare happiness
of comprehending every single word that is said, and knowing
that every word one says in return will be understood as well !
We would talk ourselves to death, now, only there are only
about ten passengers out of the sixty-five to talk to. The
others are wandering, we hardly know where. We shall not
iro ashore in Leghorn. We are surfeited with Italian cities
o O
for the present, and much prefer to walk the familiar quarter
deck and view this one from a distance.
The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government can not
understand that so large a steamer as ours could cross the
broad Atlantic with no other purpose than to indulge a party
of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure excursion. It looks too
improbable. It is suspicious, they think. Something more
important must be hidden behind it all. They can not under
stand it, and they scorn the evidence of the ship's papers.
They have decided at last that we are a battalion of incen-
254 THREATS OF QUARANTINE.
diary, blood-thirsty Garibaldians in disguise! And in all
seriousness they have set a gun-boat to watch the vessel night
and day, with orders to close down on any revolutionary
movement in a twinkling ! Police boats are on patrol duty
about us all the time, and it is as much as a sailor's liberty is
worth to show himself in a red shirt. These policemen fol
low the executive officer's boat from shore to ship and from
ship to shore and watch his dark maneuvres with a vigilant
eye. They will arrest him yet unless he assumes an expres
sion of countenance that shall have less of carnage, insurrec
tion and sedition in it. A visit paid in a friendly way to
General Garibaldi yesterday (by cordial invitation,) by some of
our passengers, has gone far to confirm the dread suspicions
the government harbors toward us. It is thought the friendly
visit was only the cloak of a bloody conspiracy. These people
draw near and watch us when we bathe in the sea from the
shut's side. Do they think we are communing with a reserve
force of rascals at the bottom ?
It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples.
Two or three of us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore,
when we are rested, we propose to go in a French steamer to
Civita Yecchia, and from thence to Rome, and by rail to
Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no matter where
they got their passengers from.
CHAPTER XXV.
are a good many things about this Italy which I
do not understand — and more especially I can not under
stand how a bankrupt Government can have such palatial
railroad depots and such marvels of turnpikes. Why, these
latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line, as smooth
as a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see
any other object, one can still see the white turnpikes of
France and Italy ; and they are clean enough to eat from,
without a table-cloth. And yet no. tolls are charged.
As for the railways — we have none like them. The cars
slide as smoothly along as if they were on runners. The
depots are vast palaces of cut marble, with stately colonnades
of the same royal stone traversing them from end to end, and
writh ample wralls and ceilings richly decorated with frescoes.
The lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the broad
floors are all laid in polished flags of marble.
These things win me more than Italy's hundred galleries of
priceless art treasures, because I can understand the one and
am not competent to appreciate the other. In the turnpikes,
the railways, the depots, and the new boulevards of uniform
houses in Florence and other cities here, I see the genius of
Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that statesman
imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall
be a foundation for these improvements — money. He has
always the wherewithal to back up his projects ; they strengthen
France and never weaken her. Her material prosperity is
genuine. But here the case is different. This country is
256 THE WORKS OF BANKRUPTCY.
bankrupt. There is no real foundation for these great works.
The prosperity they would seem to indicate is a pretence.
There is no money in the treasury, and so they enfeeble her
instead of strengthening. Italy has achieved the dearest wisli
of her heart and become an independent State — and in so doing
she has drawn an elephant in the political lottery. She has
nothing to feed it on. Inexperienced in government, she
plunged into all manner of useless expenditure, and swamped
her treasury almost in a day. She squandered millions of
francs on a navy which she did not need, and the first time
she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher
than Gilderoy's kite — to use the language of the Pilgrims.
But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago,
when Italy saw utter ruin staring her in the face and her
greenbacks hardly worth the paper they were printed on, her
Parliament ventured upon a coup de main that would have
appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less desperate cir
cumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of
the Church ! This in priest-ridden Italy ! This in a land
which has groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for
sixteen hundred years ! It was a rare good fortune for Italy,
the stress of weather that drove her to break from this prison-
house.
They do not call it confiscating the church property. That
would sound too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There
are thousands of churches in Italy, each with untold millions
of treasures stored away in its closets, and each with its bat
talion of priests to be supported. And then there are the
estates of the Church — league on league of the richest lands
and the noblest forests in all Italy — all yielding immense rev
enues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the
State. In some great districts the Church owns all the prop
erty — lands, watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They
buy, they sell, they manufacture, and since they pay no taxes,
who can hope to compete with them ?
Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will
yet seize it in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Some-
ECCLESIASTICAL SPLENDOR. 257
thing must be done to feed a starving treasury, and there is no
other resource in all Italy — none but the riches of the Church.
So the Government intends to take to itself a great portion of
the revenues arising from priestly farms, factories, etc., and
also intends to take possession of the churches and carry them
on, after its own fashion and upon its own responsibility. In
a few instances it will leave the establishments of great pet
churches undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of
priests will be retained to preach and pray, a few will be pen
sioned, and the balance turned adrift.
Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellish
ments, and see whether the Government is doing a righteous
thing or not. In Venice, to-day, a city of a hundred thousand
inhabitants, there are twelve hundred priests. Heaven only
knows how many there were before the Parliament reduced their
numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old
regime it required sixty priests to engineer it — the Govern
ment does it with five, now, and the others are discharged
from service. All about that church wretchedness and poverty
abound. At its door a dozen hats and bonnets were doffed to
us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as many hands ex
tended, appealing for pennies — appealing with foreign words
we could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes,
and sunken cheeks, and ragged raiment, that no wovds were
needed to translate. Then we passed within the great doors,
and it seemed that the riches of the world were before us !
Huge columns carved out of single masses of marble, and
inlaid from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures
wrought in costly verde antique; pulpits of the same rich
materials, whose draperies hung down in many a pictured fold,
the stony fabric counterfeiting the delicate work of the loom ;
the grand altar brilliant with polished facings and balustrades
of oriental agate, jasper, verde antique, and other precious
stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear — and slabs of
priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as if
the church had owned a quarry of it. In the midst of all this
magnificence, the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar.
17
258
MAGNIFICENCE AND MISERY.
seemed cheap and trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a
princely fortune.
Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle,
while half of that community hardly know, from day to day,
how they are going to keep body and soul together 1 And,
where is the wisdom in permitting hundreds upon hundreds of
millions of francs to be locked up in the useless trumpery of
churches all over Italy, and the people ground to death with
taxation to uphold a perishing Government ?
As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has
turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry
to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices,
and starving half her citizens to accomplish it. She is to-day
one vast museum of magnificence and misery. All the
churches in an ordinary American city put together could
hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathe
drals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a
THE CONTRAST.
hundred — and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretched-
est, princeliest land on earth.
.Look at .the grand Duomo of Florence — a vast pile that has
GENERAL EXECRATION. 259
been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years,
and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down
and worshipped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed
around me the contrast wras too striking, too suggestive, and I
said, " O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of
self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye ? Curse
your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church ?"
Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in
that Cathedral.
And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and
abuse every body I can think of. They have a grand mausoleum
in Florence, which they built to bury our Lord and Saviour
and the Medici family in. It sounds blasphemous, but it is
true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and damned
Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her
curse for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle
of costly vaults, and in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to
have been set up. The expedition sent to Jerusalem to seize
it got into trouble and could not accomplish the burglary, and
so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant now. They say the
entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre, and
was only turned into a family burying place after the Jeru
salem expedition failed — but you will excuse me. Some of
those Medicis would have smuggled themselves in sure. —
What they had not the effrontery to do, was not worth doing.
Why, they had their trivial, forgotten exploits on land and
sea pictured out in grand frescoes (as did also the ancient
Doges of Venice) with the Saviour and the Virgin throwing
bouquets to them out of the clouds, and the Deity himself
applauding from his throne in Heaven ! And who painted
these things? Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese,
Raphael — none other than the world's idols, the "old mas
ters."
Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must
save them for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let
him starve. Served him right. Raphael pictured such infernal
villains as Catherine and Marie de Medicis seated in heaven and
260 MORE MAGNIFICENCE.
conversing familiarly with the Virgin Mary and the angels,
(to say nothing of higher personages,) and yet my friends
abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old
masters — because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in
their productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but
I keep on protesting against the groveling spirit that could
persuade those masters to prostitute their noble talents to the
adulation of such monsters as the French, Venetian and Flor
entine Princes of two and three hundred years ago, all the
same.
I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful
things for bread, the princes and potentates being the only
patrons of art. If a grandly gifted man may drag his pride
and his manhood in the dirt for bread rather than starve with
the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse is a valid one.
It would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons, and
unchastity in women as well.
But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of
my memory. It is as large as a church ; its pavement is rich
enough for the pavement of a King's palace ; its great dome
is gorgeous with frescoes ; its walls are made of — what ? Mar
ble? — plaster? — wood? — paper? No. Eed porphyry — verde
antique — jasper — oriental agate — alabaster — mother-of-pearl —
chalcedony — red coral — lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are
made wholly of these precious stones, worked in, and in and in to
gether in elaborate patterns and figures, and polished till they
glow like great mirrors with the pictured splendors reflected from
the dome overhead. And before a statue of one of those dead
Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with diamonds and emer
alds enough to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These are the
things the Government has its evil eye upon, and a happy
thing it will be for Italy when they melt away in the public
treasury.
And now — . However, another beggar approaches. I will
go out and destroy him, and then come back and wTite another
chapter of vituperation.
Having eaten the friendless orphan — having driven away his
A GOOD WORD FOR THE PRIESTS. 261
comrades — having grown calm and reflective at length — I now
feel in a kindlier mood. I feel that after talking so freely
about the priests and the churches, justice demands that if I
know any thing good about either I ought to say it. I have
heard of many things that redound to the credit of the priest
hood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is
the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the
prevalence of the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican
friars — men who wear a coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl,
in this hot climate, and go barefoot. They live on alms alto
gether, I believe. They must unquestionably love their reli
gion, to suffer so much for it. When the cholera was raging
in Naples ; when the people were dying by hundreds and hun
dreds every day ; when every concern for the public welfare
was swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen
made the taking care of himself his sole object, these men
banded themselves together and went about nursing the sick
and burying the dead. Their noble efforts cost many of them
their lives. They laid them down cheerfully, and well they
might. Creeds mathematically precise, and hair-splitting nice
ties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the salvation of
some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the
unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these would
save their souls though they were bankrupt in the true religion
— which is ours.
One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Yec-
chia with us in the little French steamer. There were only
half a dozen of us in the cabin. He belonged in the steerage.
He was the life of the ship, the bloody-minded son of the
Inquisition ! He and the leader of the marine band of a
French man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera turn
about; they sang duets together; they rigged impromptu
theatrical costumes and gave us extravagant farces and panto
mimes. We got along first-rate with the friar, and were exces
sively conversational, albeit he could not understand what we
said, and certainly he never uttered a word that we could
guess the meaning of.
262 CIVITA VECCHIA THE DISMAL.
This Civita Yeccliia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and
ignorance we have found yet, except that African perdition
they call Tangier, which is just like it. The people here live
in alleys two yards wide, which have a smell about them which
is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well the alleys are not
wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person can
stand, and of course, if they were wider they would hold more,
and then the people would die. These alleys are paved with
stone, and carpeted with deceased cats, and decayed rags, and
decomposed vegetable-tops, and remnants of old boots, all
soaked with dish-water, and the people sit around on stools
and enjoy it. They are indolent, as a general thing, and yet
have few pastimes. They work two or three hours at a time,
but not hard, and then they knock off and catch flies. This
does not require any talent, because they only have to grab —
if they do not get the one they are after, they get another. It
is all the same to them. They have no partialities. Which
ever one they get is the one they want.
They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them
arrogant. They are very quiet, unpretending people. They
have more of these kind of things than other communities, but
they do not boast.
They are very uncleanly — these people — in face, in person
and dress. When they see any body with a clean shirt on,
it arouses their scorn. The women wash clothes, half the day,
at the public tanks in the streets, but they are probably some
body else's. Or may be they keep one set to wear and another
to wash ; because they never put on any that have ever been
washed. When they get done washing, they sit in the alleys
and nurse their cubs. They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and
the others scratch their backs against the door-post and are
happy.
All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not
appear to have any schools here, and only one billiard table.
Their education is at a very low stage. One portion of the
men go into the military, another into the priesthood, and the
rest into the shoe-making business.
CIVITA VECCHIA THE DISMAL.
263
They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in
Turkey. This shows that the Papal States are as far advanced
as Turkey. This fact will be alone sufficient to silence the
ITALIAN PASTIMES.
tongues of malignant calumniators. I had to get my passport
vised for Rome in Florence, and then they would not let me
come ashore here until a policeman had examined it on the
wharf and sent me a permit. They did not even dare to let
me take my passport in my hands for twelve hours, I looked
so formidable. They judged it best to let me cool down.
They thought I wanted to take the town, likely. Little did
they know me. I wouldn't have it. They examined my bag
gage at the depot. They took one of my ablest jokes and
read it over carefully twice and then read it backwards. But
it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and every
body speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.
It was no common joke. At length a reteran officer spelled
it over deliberately and shook his head three or four times and
said that in his opinion it was seditious. That was the first
time I felt alarmed. I immediately said I would explain the
document, and they crowded around. And so I explained and
26-i
CIVITA VECCHIA THE DISMAL.
explained and explained, and they took notes of all I said, but the
more I explained the more they could not understand it, and when
they desisted at last, I could not even understand it myself.
INCENDIARY DOCUMENT.
They said they believed it was an incendiary document,
leveled at the government. I declared solemnly that it was
not, but they only shook their heads and would not be satis
fied. Then they consulted a good while ; and finally they con
fiscated it. I was very sorry for this, because I had worked a
long time on that joke, and took a good deal of pride in it,
and now I suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose it
will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of
Rome, and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal
machine which would have blown up like a mine and scattered
the good Pope all around, but for a miraculous providential
interference. And I suppose that all the time I am in Rome
the police will dog me about from place to place because they
think I am a dangerous character.
OFF FOR ROME. 265
It is fearfully hot in Civita Yeccliia. The streets are made
very narrow and the houses built very solid and heavy and
high, as a protection against the heat. This is the first Italian
town I have seen which does not appear to have a patron
saint. I suppose no saint but the one that went up in the
chariot of fire could stand the climate.
There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathe
dral, with eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back
room; and they do not show you any moldy buildings that
are seven thousand years old ; nor any smoke-dried old fire
screens which are chef tfceuvres of Reubens or Simpson, or
Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties ; and they haven't
any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the
true cross. We are going to Home. There is nothing to see
here.
CHAPTEE XXVI.
TTTHAT is it that confers the noblest delight ? What is
* V that which swells a man's breast with pride above that
which any other experience can bring to him ? Discovery ! To
know that you are walking where none others have walked ;
that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before ;
that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to
an idea — to discover a great thought — an intellectual nugget,
right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plow had
gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new
hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings carry your
messages. To be the first — that is the idea. To do some
thing, say something, see something, before any body else —
these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with
which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecsta
sies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his first message, brought
by his servant, the lightning ; Fulton, in that long-drawn cen
tury of suspense, when he placed his hand upon the throttle-
valve and lo, the steamboat moved ; Jenner, when his patient
with the cow's virus in his blood, walked through the small,
pox hospitals unscathed ; Howe, when the idea shot through
his brain that for a hundred and twenty generations the eye
had been bored through the wrong end of the needle ; the
nameless lord of art who laid down his chisel in some old age
that is forgotten, now, and gloated upon the finished Laocoon ;
Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the zenith,
to print the landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and
THE MODERN ROMAN TRAVELETH.
267
he obeyed ; Columbus, in the Pinta's shrouds, when he swung
his hat above a fabled sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown
world ! These are the men who have really lived — who have
actually comprehended what pleasure is — who have crowded
long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.
What is there in Home for me to see that others have not
seen before me ? What is there for me to touch that others
have not touched? What is there for,. me to feel, to learn, to
hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others ?
What can I discover ? — Nothing. Noth
ing whatsoever. One charm of travel
dies here. But if I were only a Ro
man ! — If, added to my own I could be
gifted with modern Roman sloth, mod
ern Roman superstition, and modern
Roman boundlessness of ignorance,
what bewildering worlds of unsus
pected wonders I would discover ! Ah,
if I were only a habitant of the Cam-
pagna five and twenty miles from
Rome ! Tfien I would travel.
I would go to America, and see, and
learn, and return to the Campagna and
stand before my countrymen an illus
trious discoverer. I would say :
" I saw there a country which has no
overshadowing Mother Church, and yet
the people survive. I saw a government which never was
protected by foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that re
quired to carry on the government itself. I saw common men
and common women who could read ; I even saw small chil
dren of common country people reading from books ; if I dared
think you would believe it, I would say they could write, also.
In the cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made
of chalk and water, but never once saw goats driven through
their Broadway or their Pennsylvania Avenue or their Mont
gomery street and milked at the doors of the houses. I saw
ROMAN OF 1869.
268 THE MODERN ROMAN TRAVELETH.
real glass windows in the houses of even the commonest people.
Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of bricks ; I sol
emnly swear they are made of wood. Houses there will take
fire and burn, sometimes — actually burn entirely down, and
not leave a single vestige behind. I could state that for a
truth, upon my death-bed. And as a proof that the circum
stance is not rare, I aver that they have a thing which they
call a fire-engine, which vomits forth great streams of water,
and is kept always in readiness, by night and by day, to rush
to houses that are burning. You would think one engine
wrould be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred ;
they keep men hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing
but put out fires. For a certain sum of money other men will
insure that your house shall not burn down ; and if it burns
they will pay you for it. There are hundreds and thousands
of schools, and any body may go and learn to be wise, like a
priest. In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he
is damned ; he can not buy salvation with money for masses.
There is really not much use in being rich, there. ISTot much
use as far as the other world is concerned, but much, very
much use, as concerns this ; because there, if a man be rich, he
is very greatly honored, and can become a legislator, a govern
or, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an ass he is —
just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great places,
even though sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if
a man be rich, they give him costly presents, they ask him to
feasts, they invite him to drink complicated beverages ; but if
he be poor and in debt, they require him to do that which
they term to " settle." The women put on a different dress
almost every day ; the dress is usually fine, but absurd in
shape ; the very shape and fashion of it changes twice in a
hundred years ; and did I but covet to be called an extrava
gant falsifier, I wrould say it changed even oftener. Hair does
not grow upon the American women's heads ; it is made for
them by cunning workmen in the shops, and is curled and
frizzled into scandalous and ungodly forms. Some persons
wear eyes of glass which they see through wTith facility per-
THE MODERN ROMAN TRAVELETH. 269
haps, else they would not use them ; and in the mouths of
some are teeth made by the sacrilegious hand of man. The
dress of the men is laughably grotesque. They carry no
musket in ordinary life, nor no long-pointed pole ; they wear
no wide green-lined cloak; they wear no peaked black felt
hat, no leathern gaiters reaching to the knee, no goat-skin
breeches with the hair side out, no hob-nailed shoes, no pro
digious spurs. They wear a conical hat termed a " nail-kag ;"
a coat of saddest black ; a shirt which shows dirt so easily that
it has to be changed every month, and is very troublesome ;
things called pantaloons, which are held up by shoulder
straps, and on their feet they wear boots which are ridiculous
in pattern and can stand no wear. Yet dressed in this fan
tastic garb, these people laughed at my costume. In that
country, books are so common that it is really no curiosity to
see one. Newspapers also. They have a great machine which
prints such things by thousands every hour.
" I saw common men, there — men who were neither priests
nor princes — who yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. \J
It was not rented from the church, nor from the nobles. I am
ready to take my oath of this. In that country you might fall
from a third story window three several times, and not mash
either a soldier or a priest. — The scarcity of such people is
astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen civilians for
every soldier, and as many for every priest or preacher. Jews,
there, are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs.
They can work at any business they please ; they can sell
brand new goods if they want to ; they can keep drug-stores ;
they can practice medicine among Christians ; they can even
shake hands with Christians if they choose ; they can associate
with them, just the same as one human being does with
another human being ; they don't have to stay shut up in one
corner of the towns ; they can live in any part of a town they
like best ; it is said they even have the privilege of buying
land and houses, and owning them themselves, though I doubt
that, myself; they never have had to run races naked through
the public streets, against jackasses, to please the people in
270 THE MODERN ROMAN TRAVELETH.
carnival time; there they never have been driven by the
soldiers into a church every Sunday for hundreds of years to
hear themselves and their religion especially and particularly
cursed ; at this very day, in that curious country, a Jew is
allowed to vote, hold office, yea, get up on a rostrum in the
public street and express his opinion of the government if the
government don't suit him ! Ah, it is wonderful. The com
mon people there know a great deal; they even have the
effrontery to complain if they are not properly governed, and
to take hold and help conduct the government themselves ; if
they had laws like ours, which give one dollar of every three a
crop produces to the government for taxes, they would have
that law altered: instead of paying thirty-three dollars in
taxes, out of every one hundred they receive, they complain if
they have to pay seven. They are curious people. They do
not know when they are well oif. Mendicant priests do not
prowl among them with baskets begging for the church and
eating up their substance. One hardly ever sees a minister of
the gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a basket,
begging for subsistence. In that country the preachers are not
like our mendicant orders of friars — they have two or three
suits of clothing, and they wash sometimes. In that land are
mountains far higher than the Alban mountains ; the vast
Roman Campagna, a hundred miles long and full forty broad,
is really small compared to the United States of America ; the
Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which stretches its mighty
course almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can scarcely
throw a stone across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as
the American Mississippi — nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hud
son. In America the people are absolutely wiser and know much
more than their grandfathers did. Tliey do not plow with a sharp
ened stick, nor yet with a three-cornered block of wood that
merely scratches the top of the ground. We do that because
our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I suppose. But
those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors. They
plow with a plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it
cuts into the earth full five inches. And this is not all. They
THE GRANDEUR OF ST. PETER'S. 271
cut their grain with a horrid machine that mows down whole
fields in a day. If I dared, I would say that sometimes they
use a blasphemous plow that works by fire and vapor and
tears up an acre of ground in a single hour — but — but — I see
by your looks that you do not believe the things I am telling
you. Alas, my character is ruined, and I am a branded
speaker of untruths !"
Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter,
frequently. I knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious
structure. I knew it was just about the length of the capitol at
Washington — say seven hundred and thirty feet. I knew it was
three hundred and sixty-four feet wide, and consequently wider
than the capitol. I knew that the cross on the top of the dome
of the church was four hundred and thirty-eight feet above the
ground, and therefore about a hundred or may be a hundred and
twenty-five feet higher than the dome of the capitol. — Thus I had
one gauge. I wished to come as near forming a correct idea of
how it was going to look, as possible ; I had a curiosity to see
how much I would err. I erred considerably. St. Peter's did
not look nearly so large as the capitol, and certainly not a
twentieth part as beautiful, from the outside.
When we reached the door, and stood fairly within the
church, it was impossible to comprehend that it was a very
large building. I had to cipher a comprehension of it. I had
to ransack my memory for some more similes. St. Peter's is
bulky. Its height and size would represent two of the Wash
ington capitol set one on top of the other — if the capitol were
wider ; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary build
ings set one on top of the other. St. Peter's was that large, but
it could and would not look so. The trouble was that every thing
in it and about it was on such a scale of uniform vastness that
there were no contrasts to judge by — none but the people, and
I had not noticed them. They were insects. The statues of
children holding vases of holy water were immense, according
to the tables of figures, but so was every thing else around
them. The mosaic pictures in the dome were huge, and were
made of thousands and thousands of cubes of glass as large as
272 THE GRANDEUR OF ST. PETER'S.
the end of my little finger, but those pictures looked smooth,
and gaudy of color, and in good proportion to the dome. Evi
dently they would not answer to measure by. Away down
toward the far end of the church (I thought it was really clear
at the far end, but discovered afterward that it was in the centre,
under the dome,) stood the thing they call the baldacchino — a
great bronze pyramidal frame-work like that which upholds a
mosquito bar. It only looked like a considerably magnified bed
stead — nothing more. Yet I knew it was a good deal more
than half as high as Niagara Falls. It was overshadowed by a
dome so mighty that its own height was snubbed. The four
great square piers or pillars that stand equidistant from each
other in the church, and support the roof, I could not work up
to their real dimensions by any method of comparison. I
knew that the faces of each were about the width of a very
large dwelling-house front, (fifty or sixty feet,) and that they
were twice as high as an ordinary three-story dwelling, but
still they looked small. I tried all the different ways I could
think of to compel myself to understand how large St. Peter's
was, but with small success. The mosaic portrait of an Apostle
who was writing with a pen six feet long seemed only an ordi
nary Apostle.
But the people attracted my attention after a while. To
stand in the door of St. Peter's and look at men down toward
its further extremity, two blocks away, has a diminishing effect
on them ; surrounded by the prodigious pictures and statues,
and lost in the vast spaces, they look very much smaller than
they would if they stood two blocks away in the open air. I
" averaged " a man as he passed me and watched him as he
drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond — watched
him dwindle to an insignificant school-boy, and then, in
the midst of the silent throng of human pigmies gliding
about him, I lost him. The church had lately been dec
orated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of
St. Peter, and men were engaged, now, in removing the
flowers and gilt paper from the walls and pillars. As no
ladders could reach the great heights, the men swung them-
HOLY KELICS. 273
selves down from balustrades and the capitals of pilasters by
ropes, to do this work. The upper gallery which encircles the
inner sweep of the dome is two hundred and forty feet above
the floor of the church — very few steeples in America could
reach up to it. Visitors always go up there to look down
into the church because one gets the best idea of some of the
heights and distances from that point. While we stood on the
floor one of the workmen swung loose from that gallery at the
end of a long rope. I had not supposed, before, that a man
could look so much like a spider. He was insignificant in size,
and his rope seemed only a thread. Seeing that he took up so
little space, I could believe the story, then, that ten thousand
troops went to St. Peter's, once, to hear mass, and their com
manding officer came afterward, and not finding them, sup
posed they had not yet arrived. But they were in the church,
nevertheless — they were in one of the transepts. Nearly fifty
thousand persons assembled in St. Peter's to hear the publish
ing of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is esti
mated that the floor of the church affords standing room for —
for a large number of people ; I have forgotten the exact fig
ures. But it is no matter — it is near enough.
They have twelve small pillars, in St. Peter's, which came
from Solomon's Temple. They have, also — which was far /
more interesting to me — a piece of the true cross, and some
nails, and a part of the crown of thorns.
Of course we ascended to the summit of the dome, and of
course we also went up into the gilt copper ball which is above
it. — There was room there for a dozen persons, with a little
crowding, and it was as close and hot as an oven. Some of
those people who are so fond of writing their names in promi
nent places had been there before us — a million or two, I
should think. From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every
notable object in Rome, from the Castle of St. Angelo to the
Coliseum. He can discern the seven hills upon which Rome
is built. He can see the Tiber, and the locality of the bridge
which Horatius kept " in the brave days of old " when Lars
Porsena attempted to cross it with his invading host. He can
18
274 A RENOWNED PANORAMA.
see the spot where the Horatii and the Curatii fought their
famous battle. He can see the broad green Campagna, stretch
ing away toward the mountains, with its scattered arches and
broken aqueducts of the olden time, so picturesque in their
gray ruin, and so daintily festooned with vines. He can see
the Alban Mountains, the Appenines, the Sabine Hills, and
the blue Mediterranean. He can see a panorama that is
varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in
history than any other in Europe. — About his feet is spread
the remnant of a city that once had a population of four
million souls ; and among its massed edifices stand the ruins
of temples, columns, and triumphal arches that knew the
Caesars, and the noonday of Roman splendor ; and close by
them, in unimpaired strength, is a drain of arched and heavy
masonry that belonged to that older city which stood here
before Romulus and Remus were born or Rome thought of.
The Appian Way is here yet, and looking much as it did, per
haps, when the triumphal processions of the Emperors moved
over it in other days bringing fettered princes from the con
fines of the earth. We can not see the long array of chariots
and mail-clad men laden with the spoils of conquest, but we
can imagine the pageant, after a fashion. We look out upon
many objects of interest from the dome of St. Peter's ; and
last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon the building
which was once the Inquisition. How times changed, between
the older ages and the new ! Some seventeen or eighteen cen
turies ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Chris
tians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild
beasts in upon them for a show. It was for a lesson as well.
It was to teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine
the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the
victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of
them in the twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians
came into power , when the holy Mother Church became mis
tress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways
by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisi
tion and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle
OLD MONKISH FRAUDS. 275
and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians
to love him ; and they did all they could to persuade them to
love and honor him — first by twisting their thumbs out of
joint with a screw ; then by nipping their flesh with pincers —
red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold
weather ; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by
roasting them in public. They always convinced those barba
rians. The true religion, properly administered, as the good
Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It
is wonderfully persuasive, also. There is a great difference
between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their
finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the system of degraded
barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized people. It is a
great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.
I prefer not to describe St. Peter's. It has been done
before. The ashes of Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose
in a crypt under the baldaccJiino. We stood reverently in that
place ; so did wre also in the Mamertine Prison, where he was
confined, where he converted the soldiers, and where tradition
says he caused a spring of water to flow in order that he might
baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter's
face in the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made that
by falling up against it, we doubted. And when, also, the
monk at the church of San Sebastian showed us a paving-stone
with two great footprints in it and said that Peter's feet made
those, we lacked confidence again. Such things do not impress
one. The monk said that angels came and liberated Peter
from prison by night, and he started away from Rome by the
Appian Way. The Saviour met him and told him to go back,
which he did. Peter left those footprints in the stone upon
which he stood at the time. It was not stated how it was ever
discovered whose footprints they were, seeing the interview
occurred secretly and at night. The print of the face in the
prison was that of a man of common size ; the footprints were
those of a man ten or twelve feet high. The discrepancy con
firmed our unbelief.
We necessarily visited the Forum, where Csesar was assassi-
276
THE RUINED' COLISEUM
nated, and also the Tarpeian Rock. We saw the Dying Gla
diator at the Capitol, and I think that even we appreciated that
wonder of art ; as much, perhaps, as we did that fearful story
wrought in marble, in the
Vatican — the Laocoon. And
then the Coliseum.
Every body knows the pic
ture of the Coliseum ; every
body recognizes at once that
" looped and windowed " band
box with a side bitten out.
Being rather isolated, it shows
to better advantage than any other of the monuments of ancient
Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan altars uphold
the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated
gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built
about with shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred.
But the monarch of all European ruins, the Coliseum, main
tains that reserve and that royal seclusion which is proper to
majesty. Weeds and flowers spring from its massy arches and
its circling seats, and vines hang their fringes from its lofty
THE RUINED COLISEUM. 277
walls. An impressive silence broods over the monstrous struc
ture where such multitudes of men and women were wont to
assemble in other days. The butterflies have taken the places
of the queens of fashion and beauty of eighteen centuries ago,
and the lizards sun themselves in the sacred seat of the Empe
ror. More vividly than all the written histories, the Coliseum
tells the story of Rome's grandeur and Rome's decay. It is
the worthiest type of both that exists. Moving about the
Rome of to-day, we might find it hard to believe in her old
magnificence and her millions of population ; but with this
stubborn evidence before us that she was obliged to have a
theatre with sitting room for eighty thousand persons and
standing room for twenty thousand more, to accommodate such
of her citizens as required amusement, we find belief less diffi
cult. The Coliseum is over one thousand six hundred feet
long, seven hundred and fifty wide, and one hundred and sixty-
five high. Its shape is oval.
In America we make convicts useful at the same time that
we punish them for their crimes. We farm them out and
compel them to earn money for the State by making barrels
and building roads. Thus wre combine business with retribu
tion, and all things are lovely. But in ancient Rome they
combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary
that the new sect called Christians should be exterminated, the
people judged it wise to make this work profitable to the State
at the same time, and entertaining to the public. In addition
to the gladiatorial combats and other shows, they sometimes
threw members of the hated sect into the arena of the Coliseum
and turned wild beasts in upon them. It is estimated that
seventy thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in this place.
This has made the Coliseum holy ground, in the eyes of the'
followers of the Saviour. And well it might ; for if the chain
that bound a saint, and the footprints a saint has left upon a
stone he chanced to stand upon, be holy, surely the spot where
a man gave up his life for his faith is holy.
Seventeen or eighteen centuries ago this Coliseum was the
theatre of Rome, and Rome was mistress of tlie world.. Splen-
278
THE COLISEUM IX ITS PRIME.
did pageants were exhibited here, in presence of the Emperor,
the great ministers of State, the nobles, and vast audiences of
citizens of smaller consequence. Gladiators fought with gla
diators and at times with warrior prisoners from many a
distant land. It was the theatre of Rome — of the world —
and the man of fashion who could not let fall in a casual
and unintentional manner something about " my private box
at the Coliseum " could not move in the first circles. When
the clothing-store merchant wished to consume the corner
grocery man with envy, he bought secured seats in the front
row and let the thing be known. When the irresistible
dry goods clerk wished to blight and destroy, according to his
native instinct, he got himself up regardless of expense and
took some other fellow's young lady to the Coliseum, and then
accented the affront by cramming her
with ice cream between the acts, or
by approaching the cage and stirring
up the martyrs with his whalebone
cane for her edification. The Roman
swell was in his true element only
when he stood up against a pillar and
fingered his moustache unconscious
of the ladies ; when he viewed the
bloody combats through an opera-
glass two inches long ; when he ex
cited the envy of provincials by crit
icisms which showed that he had
been to the Coliseum many and
many a time and was long ago over
. the novelty of it ; wrhen he turned
away with a yawn at last and said,
" He a star ! handles his sword like
an apprentice brigand ! he'll do for
the country, may.be, but he don't answer for the metropolis !"
Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the
Saturday matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy w^ho ate
his peanuts .and guyed .the .gladiators from the dizzy gallery.
OLD ROMAN.
A PLAYBILL 1700 YEARS OLD. 279
For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among
the rubbish of the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that
establishment now extant. There was a suggestive smell of
mint-drops about it still, a corner of it had evidently been
chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these words were
written in a delicate female hand :
" Me ft me on the Tarpeian Pock to-morrotv evening, dear, at sharp seven. Mother
will be absent on a visit to her friends in the Sabine Hills.
CLAUDIA."
Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little
hand that wrote those dainty lines ? Dust and ashes these
seventeen hundred years !
Thus reads the bill :
EOMAS" COLISEUM.
UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION!
NEW PROPERTIES! NEW LIONS! NEW GLADIATORS!
Engagement of the renowned
MARCUS MARCELLUS VALERIAN!
FOR SIX NIGHTS ONLY!
The management beg leave to offer to the public an entertainment surpassing in
magnificence any thing that has heretofore been attempted on any stage. No
expense has been spared to make the opening season one which shall be worthy tho
generous patronage which the management feel sure will crown their efforts. The
management beg leave to state that they have succeeded in securing the services
of a
GALAXY OF TALENT!
such as has not been beheld in Rome before.
The performance will commence this evening with a
GRAND BROADSWORD COMBAT!
between two young and promising amateurs and a celebrated Parthian gladiator
who has just arrived a prisoner from the Camp of Verus.
This will be followed by a grand moral
BATTLE-AX ENGAGEMENT!
280 A PLAYBILL 1700 YEARS OLD.
*
between the renowned Valerian (with one hand tied behind him,) and t\vo gigantic
savages from Britain.
After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive,) will fight with the broad
sword,
LEFT-HANDED !
against six Sophomores and a Freshman from the Gladiatorial College !
A long series of brilliant engagements will follow, in which the finest talent of
the Empire will take part.
After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy known as
"THE YOUNG ACHILLES,"
will engage four tiger whelps in combat, armed with no other weapon than his little
spear !
The whole to conclude with a chaste and elegant
GENERAL SLAUGHTER!
In which thirteen African Lions and twenty-two Barbarian Prisoners will war with
each other until all are exterminated.
BOX OFFICE NOW OPEN.
Dress Circle One Dollar ; Children and Servants half price.
An efficient police force will be on hand to preserve order and keep the wild
beasts from leaping the railings and discommoding the audience.
Doors open at 7 ; performance begins at 8.
POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST.
Diodorus Job Press.
It was as singular as it was gratifying that I was also so
fortunate as to find among the rubbish of the arena, a stained
and mutilated copy of the Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing
a critique upon this very performance. It comes to hand too
late by many centuries to rank as news, and therefore I trans
late and publish it simply to show how very little the general
style and phraseology of dramatic criticism has altered in the
ages that have dragged their slow length along since the car
riers laid this one damp and fresh before their Roman patrons :
"THE OPESTING SEASON. — COLISEUM. — Notwithstanding the inclemency of the
weather, quite a respectable number of the rank and fashion of the city assembled
last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan boards of the young tragedian
ANCIENT ROMAN NEWSPAPER CRITIQUE. 281
who has of late been winning such golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the
provinces. Some sixty thousand persons were present, and but for the fact that the
streets were almost impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would have been
full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the imperial box, and
was the cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious nobles arid generals of the Empire
graced the occasion with their presence, and not the least among them was the
young patrician lieutenant whose laurels, won in the ranks of the '• Thundering
Legion," are still so green upon his brow. The cheer which greeted his entrance
was heard beyond the Tiber !
'• The late repairs and decorations add both to the comeliness and the comfort of
the Coliseum. The new cushions are a great improvement upon the hard marble
seats we have been so long accustomed to. The present management deserve well
of the public. They have restored to the Coliseum the gilding, the rich upholstery
COLISEUM OF ANCIENT ROME.
and the uniform magnificence which old Coliseum frequenters tell us Rome was so
proud of fifty years ago.
282 ANCIENT ROMAN NEWSPAPER CRITIQUE.
"The opening scene last night — the broadsword combat between two young
amateurs and a famous Parthian gladiator who was sent here a prisoner — was very
fine. The elder of the two young gentlemen handled his weapon with a grace that
marked the possession of extraordinary talent. His feint of thrusting, followed
instantly by a happily delivered blow which unhelmeted the Parthian, was received
with hearty applause. He was not thoroughly up in the backhanded stroke, but
it was very gratifying to his numerous friends to know that, in time, practice would
have overcome this defect. However, he was killed. His sisters, who were present,
expressed considerable regret. His mother left the Coliseum. The other youth
maintained the contest with such spirit as to call forth enthusiastic bursts of
applause. When at last he fell a corpse, his aged mother ran screaming, with hair
disheveled and tears streaming from her eyes, and swooned away just as her hands
were clutching at the railings of the arena. She was promptly removed by the
police. Under the circumstances the woman's conduct was pardonable, perhaps,
but we suggest that such exhibitions interfere with the decorum which should be
preserved during the performances, and are highly improper in the presence of the
Emperor. The Parthian prisoner fought bravely and well; and well he might, for
he was fighting for both life and liberty. His wife and children were there to nerve
his arm with their love, and to remind him of the old home he should see again if
he conquered. When his second assailant fell, the woman clasped her children to
her breast and wept for joy. But it was only a transient happiness. The captive
staggered toward her and she saw that the liberty he had earned was earned too
late. He was wounded uuto death. Thus the first act closed in a manner which
was entirely satisfactory. The manager was called before the curtain and returned
his thanks for the honor done him, in a speech which was replete with wit and
humor, and closed by hoping that his humble efforts to afford cheerful and instruc
tive entertainment would continue to meet with the approbation of the Roman
public.
" The star now appeared, and was received with vociferous applause and the
simultaneous waving of sixty thousand handkerchiefs. Marcus Marcellus Valerian
(stage name — his real name is Smith,) is a splendid specimen of physical develop
ment, and an artist of rare merit. His management of the battle-ax is wonderful.
His gayety and his playfulness are irresistible, in his comic parts, and yet they are
inferior to his sublime conceptions in the grave realm of tragedy. When his ax was
describing fiery circles about the heads of the bewildered barbarians, in exact time
with his springing body and his prancing legs, the audience gave way to uncon
trollable bursts of laughter; but when the back of his weapon broke the skull of
one and almost .n the same instant its edge clove the other's body in twain, the
howl of enthusiastic applause that shook the building, was the acknowledgment of
a critical assemblage that he was a master of the noblest department of his profes
sion.^ If he has a fault, (and we are sorry to even intimate that he has,) it is that
of glancing at the audience, in the midst of the most exciting moments of the per
formance, as if seeking admiration. The pausing in a fight to bow when bouquets
are thrown to him is also in bad taste. In the great left-handed combat he appeared
to be looking at the audience half the time, instead of carving his adversaries ; and
when he had slain all the sophomores and was dallying with the freshman, he
ANCIENT ROMAN NEWSPAPER CRITIQUE. 283
stooped and snatched a bouquet as it fell, and offered it to his adversary at a timo
when a blow was descending which promised favorably to be his death-warrant.
Such levity is proper enough in the provinces, we make no doubt, but it ill suits the
dignity of the metropolis. We trust our young friend will take these remarks in
good part, for wo mean them solely for his benefit. All who know us are aware
that although we are at times justly severe upon tigers and martyrs, we never in
tentionally offend gladiators.
"The Infant Prodigy performed wonders. He overcame his four tiger whelps
with ease, and with no other hurt than the loss of a portion of his scalp. The Gen
eral Slaughter was rendered with a faithfulness to details which reflects the highest
credit upon the late participants in it.
" Upon the whole, last night's performances shed honor not only upon the man
agement but upon the city that encourages and sustains such wholesome and
instructive entertainments. We would simply suggest that the practice of vulgar
young boys in the gallery of shying peanuts and paper pellets at the tigers, and
saying " Hi-yil" and manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by such observations
as "Bully for the lion!" "Go it, Gladdy!" "Boots!" "Speech!" "Take a
walk round the block!" and so on, are extremely reprehensible, when the Emperor
is present, and ought to be stopped by the police. Several times last night, when
the supernumeraries entered the arena to drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in
the gallery shouted, "Supe! supe!" and also, "Oh, what a coat!" and "Why don't
you pad them shanks?" and made use of various other remarks expressive of deri
sion. These things are very annoying to the audience.
" A matinee for the little folks is promised for this afternoon, on which occasion
several martyrs will be eaten by the tigers. The regular performance will continue
every night till further notice. Material change of programme every evening.
Benefit of Valerian, Tuesday, 29th, if he lives."
I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was
often surprised to notice how much more I knew about Hamlet
than Forrest did ; and it gratifies me to observe, now, how
much better my brethren of ancient times knew how a broad
sword battle ought to be fought than the gladiators.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SO far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud of him
self, and satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written
about the Coliseum, and the gladiators, the martyrs, and the
lions, and yet have never once used the phrase " butchered to
make a Roman holyday." I am the only free white man of
mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron originated
the expression.
Butchered to make a Roman holyday sounds well for the
first seventeen or eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it
in print, but after that it begins to grow tiresome. I find it
in all the books concerning Rome — and here latterly it re
minds me of Judge Oliver. Oliver was a young lawyer, fresh
from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of Nevada
to begin life. He found that country, and our ways of life,
there, in those early days, different from life in ~Ne\v England
or Paris. But he put on a woollen shirt and strapped a navy
revolver to his person, took to the bacon and beans of the
country, and determined to do in Kevada as Xevada did.
Oliver accepted the situation so completely that although he
must have sorrowed over many of his trials, he never com
plained — that is, he never complained but once. He, two others,
and myself, started to the new silver mines in the Ilumboldt
mountains — he to be Probate Jud^e of Ilumboldt county, and
O «/ /
we to mine. The distance was two hundred miles. It was
dead of winter. We bought a two-horse wagon and put
eighteen hundred pounds of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-
powder, picks and shovels in it ; we bought two sorry-looking
THE UNCOMPLAINING MAN. 285
Mexican " plugs," with the hair turned the wrong way and
more corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque of
Omar; we hitched up and started. It was a dreadful trip.
But Oliver did not complain. The horses dragged the wagon
two miles from town and then gave out. Then we three
pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver moved ahead and
pulled the horses after him by the bits. We complained, but
DID NOT COMPLAIN.
Oliver did not. The ground was frozen, and it froze our
backs while we slept ; the wind swept across our faces and
froze our noses. Oliver did not complain. Five days of
pushing the wagon by day and freezing by night brought us
to the bad part of the journey — the Forty Mile .Desert, or the
Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this mildest-
mannered man that ever was, had not complained. We
started across at eight in the morning, pushing through sand
that had no bottom ; toiling all day long by the wrecks of a
thousand wagons, the skeletons of ten thousand oxen ; * by
wagon-tires enough to hoop the Washington Monument to the
top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island ; by human
graves ; with our throats parched always, with thirst ; lips
bleeding from the alkali dust ; hungry, perspiring, and very,
very weary — so weary that when we dropped in the sand
every fifty yards to rest the horses, we could hardly keep from
going to sleep — no complaints from Oliver: none the next
morning at three o'clock, when we got across, tired to death.
286
THE UNCOMPLAINING MAN.
Awakened two or three nights afterward at midnight, in a narrow
canon, by the snow falling on our faces, and appalled at the
imminent danger of being " snowed in," we harnessed up and
pushed on till eight in the morning, passed the " Divide " and
knew we were saved. No complaints. Fifteen days of hard
ship and fatigue brought us to the end of the two hundred
miles, and the Judge had not complained. We wondered if
any thing could exasperate him. We built a Ilumboldt house.
It is done in this way. You dig a square in the steep base of
the mountain, and set up two uprights and top them w^ith two
joists. Then you stretch a great sheet of " cotton domestic "
from the point where the joists join the hill-side down over
the joists to the ground ; this makes the roof and the front of
the mansion ; the sides
and back are the dirt
walls your digging has
left. A chimney is easily
made by turning up one
corner of the roof. Oli
ver was sitting alone in
this dismal den, one
night, by a sage-brush
fire, writing poetry; he
was very fond of digging
poetry out of himself — or
blasting it out when it
came hard. He heard an
animal's footsteps close
to the roof; a stone or
two and some dirt came
through and fell by him.
He grew uneasy and said
"Hi! — clear out from
HUMUOLDT HOUSE. ., ,, |5, /»
there, can't you I" — from
time to time. But by and by he fell asleep where he sat,
and pretty soon a mule fell down the chimney ! The fire flew
in every direction, and Oliver went over backwards. About
THE UNCOMPLAINING MAN. 287
ten nights after that, he recovered confidence enough to go to
writing poetry again. Again he dozed off to sleep, and again
a mule fell down the chimney. This time, about half of that
side of the house came in with the mule. Struggling to get
up, the mule kicked the candle out and smashed most of the
kitchen furniture, and raised considerable dust. These violent
awakenings must have been annoying to Oliver, but he never
complained. He moved to a mansion on the opposite side of
the canon, because he had noticed the mules did not go there.
One night about eight o'clock he was endeavoring to finish
his poem, when a stone rolled in — then a hoof appeared below
the canvas — then part of a cow — the after part. He leaned
back in dread, and shouted " Ilooy ! hooy ! get out of this !"
and the cow struggled manfully — lost ground steadily — dirt
and dust streamed down, and before Oliver could get well
away, the entire cow crashed through on to the table and
made a shapeless wreck of every thing !
Then, for the first time in his life, I think, Oliver com
plained. He said,
" This thing is growing monotonous /"
Then he resigned his judgeship and left Ilumboldt county.
" Butchered to make a Roman holyday" has grown monot
onous to me.
In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael
Angelo Buonarotti. I used to worship the mighty genius of
Michael Angelo — that man who was great in poetry, painting,
sculpture, architecture — great in every thing he undertook.
But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast — for luncheon
—for dinner — for tea — for supper — for between meals. I like a
change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every thing ; in
Milan he or his pupils designed every thing ; he designed the
Lake of Como ; in Padua, Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did
we ever hear of, from guides, but Michael Angelo ? In Flor
ence, he painted every thing, designed every thing, nearly, and
what he did not design he used to sit on a favorite stone and
look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa he designed
every thing but the old shot-tower, and they would have at-
288
AX EXASPERATING SUBJECT.
tributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the
perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the
custom house regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here — here
it is frightful. He designed St. Peters ; he designed the
Pope ; he designed the Pantheon, the uniform of the Pope's
soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Coliseum, the Capitol, the
Tarpeiari Rock, the Barberini Palace. St. John Lateran, the
Campagna, the Appian AVay, the Seven Hills, the Baths of
Caraealla, the Clandian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima — the
eternal bore designed the Eternal City, and unless all men
and books do lie, he painted every thing in it ! Dan said the
other day to the guide, " Enough, enough, enough ! Say no
more ! Lump the
whole thing ! say that
the Creator made
Italy from designs by
Michael Angelo !"
I never felt so fer
vently thankful, so
soothed, so tranquil,
so filled with a blessed
peace, as I did yester
day when I learned
that Michael Angelo
was dead.
But we have taken
it out of this guide.
He has marched us
through miles of pic
tures and sculpture
in the vast corridors of the Vatican ; and through miles of
pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces ; he has shown
us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough
to frescoe the heavens — pretty much all done by Michael
Angelo. So with him we have played that game which has
vanquished so many guides for us — imbecility and idiotic
questions. These creatures never suspect — they have no idea
of a sarcasm.
DAN.
THE ROMAN GUIDE.
289
BRONZE STATUE.
He shows us a figure and says : " Statoo brunzo." (Bronze
statue.)
We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks : " By Mi
chael Angelo ?"
"No — not know
who."
Then he shows us
the ancient Roman
Forum. The doc
tor asks : " Michael
Angelo ?"
A stare from the
guide. "No — thou-
san' year before he
is born."
Then an Egyp
tian obelisk. A-
gain : " Michael
Angelo?"
" Oh, mon dieu,
genteelmen ! Zis is two thousan' year before he is born !"
He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes,
that he dreads to show us any thing at all. The wretch has
tried all the ways he can think of to make us comprehend
that Michael Angelo is only responsible for the creation of a
part of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded yet.
Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and sight
seeing is necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough.
Therefore this guide must continue to suffer. If he does not
enjoy it, so much the worse for him. We do.
In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning
those necessary nuisances, European guides. Many a man
has wished in his heart he could do without his guide ; but
knowing he could not, has wished he could get some amuse
ment out of him as a remuneration for the affliction of his
society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our
experience can be made useful to others they are welcome to it.
19
290 ASININE GUIDES IN GENERAL.
Guides know about enough English to tangle every thing
up so that a man can make neither head or tail of it. They
know their story by heart — the history of every statue, paint
ing, cathedral or other wonder they show you. They know it
and tell it as a parrot would — and if you interrupt, and throw
them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again.
All their lives long, they are employed in showing strange
things to foreigners and listening to their bursts of admiration.
It is human nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It
o o
is what prompts children to say " smart" things, and do ab
surd ones, and in other ways " show off" when company is
present. It is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm
to go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news. Think,
then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege
it is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw them
into perfect ecstasies of admiration ! He gets so that he could
not by any possibility live in a soberer atmosphere. After we
discovered this, we never went into ecstacies any more — we
never admired any thing — we never showed any but impassi
ble faces and stupid indifference in the presence of the sub-
limest wonders a guide had to display. We had found their
weak point. We have made good use of it ever since. We
have made some of those people savage, at times, but we have
never lost our own serenity.
The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can
keep his countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot,,
and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice than any
man that lives. It comes natural to him.
The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American
party, because Americans so much wonder, and deal so much
in sentiment and emotion before any relic of Columbus. Our
guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed a spring
mattrass. He was full of animation — full of impatience. He
said:
" Come wis me, genteelmen ! — come ! I show you ze letter
writing by Christopher Colombo! — write it himself! — write it
wis his own hand ! — come !"
REMARKABLE PENMANSHIP. 201
He took us to the municipal palace. After much impres
sive fumbling of keys and opening of locks, the stained and
aged document was spread before us. The guide's eyes
sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment
with his finger :
" What I tell you, genteelmen ! Is it not so ? See ! hand
writing Christopher Colombo! — write- it himself!"
We looked indifferent — unconcerned. The doctor examined
the document very deliberately, during a painful pause. — Then
he said, without any show of interest :
" Ah — Ferguson — what — what did you say was the name
of the party who wrote this ?"
" Christopher Colombo ! ze great Christopher Colombo !"
Another deliberate examination.
"Ah — did he write it himself, or — or how?"
PENMANSHIP
"He write it himself! — Christopher Colombo! he's own
hand-writing, write by himself!"
Then the doctor laid the document down and said :
" Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years
old that could write better than that."
292 IMPOTENT QUESTIONS.
" But zis is ze great Christo —
" I don't care who it is ! It's the worst writing I ever saw.
Now you musn't think you can impose on us because we are
strangers. We are not fools, by a good deal. If you have
got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out !
— and if you haven't, drive on !"
We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but
he made one more venture. He had something which he
thought would overcome us. He said :
" Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me ! I show you beautiful,
O, magnificent bust Christopher Colombo ! — splendid, grand,
magnificent !"
He brought us before the beautiful bust — for it was beauti
ful — and sprang back and struck an attitude :
" Ah, look, genteelmen ! — beautiful, grand, — bust Christo
pher Colombo ! — beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal !"
The doctor put up his eye-glass — procured for such occa
sions :
" Ah — what did you say this gentleman's name was ?"
" Christopher Colombo ! — ze great Christopher Colombo !"
'* Christopher Colombo — the great Christopher Colombo.
Well, what did he do ?"
" Discover America ! — discover America, Oh, ze devil !"
" Discover America. No — that statement will hardly wash.
We are just from America ourselves. We heard nothing
about it. Christopher Colombo — pleasant name — is — is he
dead ?"
" Oh, corpo di Baccho ! — three hundred year !"
"What did he die of?"
" I do not know ! — I can not tell."
"Small-pox, think?"
" I do not know, genteelmen ! — I do not know what he die
of!"
"Measles, likely?"
" May be — may be — I do not know — I think he die of some
things."
"Parents living?"
LABOR LOST.
293
" Im-posseeble !"
" Ah — which is the bust and which is the pedestal ?"
" Santa Maria ! — zis ze bust ! — zi's ze pedestal !"
" Ah, I see, I see — happy combination — very happy combi
nation, indeed. Is — is this the first time this gentleman was
ever on a bust ?"
ON A BUST.
That joke was lost on the foreigner — guides can not master
the subtleties of the American joke,
We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yester
day we spent three or four hours in the Vatican, again, that
wonderful world of curiosities. We came very near express
ing interest, sometimes — even admiration — it was very hard
to keep from it. We succeeded though. Nobody else ever
did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered—
non-plussed. He wralked his legs off, nearly, hunting up ex
traordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but
294 A SURE THING.
it was a failure ; we never showed any interest in any thing.
He had reserved what he considered to be his greatest wonder
till the last — a royal Egyptian mummy, the best preserved in
the world, perhaps. He took us there. He felt so sure, this
time, that some of his old enthusiasm came back to him :
" See, genteelmen ! — Mummy ! Mummy !"
The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.
" Ah, — Ferguson — what did I understand you to say the
gentleman's name was ?"
" Name ? — he got no name ! — Mummy ! — 'Gyptian mum-
my!"
" Yes, yes. Born here ?"
" No ! ''Gyptian mummy !"
"Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?"
" No ! — not Frenchman, not Roman ! — born in Egypta !"
" Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. For
eign locality, likely. Mummy — mummy. How calm he is —
how self-possessed. Is, ah — is he dead ?"
" Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan' year !"
The doctor turned on him savagely :
" Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this !
Playing us for Chinamen because we are strangers and trying
to learn ! Trying to impose your vile second-hand carcasses on
us! — thunder and lightning, I've a notion to — to — if you've
got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out ! — or by George we'll
brain you !"
"We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman.
However, he has paid us back, partly, without knowing it.
He came to the hotel this morning to ask if we were up, and
he endeavored as well as he could to describe us, so that the
landlord would know which persons he meant. He finished
with the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observa
tion was so innocent and so honest that it amounted to a very
good thing for a guide to say.
There is one remark (already mentioned,) which never yet
has failed to disgust these guides. We use it always, when
we can think of nothing else to say. After they have ex-
SUBTERRANEAN MYSTERIES. 295
Lausted their enthusiasm pointing out to us and praising the
beauties of some ancient bronze image or broken-legged
statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five, ten,
fifteen minutes — as long as we can hold out, in fact — and then
ask:
« Is— is he dead ?"
That conquers the serenest of them. It is not what they
are looking for — especially a new guide. Our Roman Fergu
son is the most patient, unsuspecting, long-suffering subject
we have had yet. We shall be sorry to part with him. We
have enjoyed his society very much. We trust he has enjoyed
ours, but we are harassed with doubts.
We have been in the catacombs. It was like going down
into a very deep cellar, only it was a cellar which had no end
to it. The narrow passages are roughly hewn in the rock,
and on each hand as you pass along, the hollowed shelves are
carved out, from three to fourteen deep ; each held a corpse
once. There are names, and Christian symbols, and prayers,
or sentences expressive of Christian hopes, carved upon nearly
every sarcophagus. The dates belong away back in the dawn
of the Christian era, of course. Here, in these holes in the
ground, the first Christians sometimes burrowed to escape per
secution. They crawled out at night to get food, but remained
under cover in the day time. The priest told us that St.
Sebastian lived under ground for some time while he was
being hunted ; he went out one day, and the soldiery discov
ered and shot him to death with arrows. Five or six of the
early Popes — those who reigned about sixteen hundred years
ago — held their papal courts and advised with their clergy in
the bowels of the earth. Dm ing seventeen years — from A. D.
235 to A. D. 252 — the Popes did not appear above ground.
Four were raised to the great office during that period. Four
years apiece, or thereabouts. It is very suggestive of the un-
healthiness of underground graveyards as places of residence.
One Pope afterward spent his entire pontificate in the cata
combs — eight years. Another was discovered in them and
murdered in the episcopal chair. There was no satisfaction
296 RELIGIOUS EXPLOSION.
in being a Pope in those days. There were too many annoy
ances. There are one hundred and sixty catacombs under
Rome, each with its maze of narrow passages crossing and re-
crossing each other and each passage walled to the top with
scooped graves its entire length. A careful estimate makes the
length of the passages of all the catacombs combined foot np
nine hundred miles, and their graves number seven millions.
We did not go through all the passages of all the catacombs.
We were very anxious to do it, and made the necessary ar
rangements, but our too limited time obliged us to give up the
idea. So we only groped through the dismal labyrinth of
St. Callixtus, under the Church of St. Sebastian. In the
various catacombs are small chapels rudely hewn in the stones,
and here the early Christians often held their religious services
by dim, ghostly lights. Think of m£tes and a sermon away
down in those tangled caverns under ground !
In the catacombs were buried St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, and
several other of the most celebrated of the saints. In the
catacomb of St. Callixtus, St. Bridget used to remain long
hours in holy contemplation, and St. Charles Borromeo was
wont to spend whole nights in prayer there. It was also the
scene of a very marvelous thing.
" Here the heart of St. Philip Neri was so inflamed with divine love as to burst
his ribs."
I find that grave statement in a book published in New
York in 1858, and written by " Rev. William II. Neligan,
LL.D., M. A., Trinity College, Dublin ; Member of the Ar
chaeological Society of Great Britain." Therefore, I believe
it. Otherwise, I could not. Under other circumstances I
should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for din
ner.
This author puts my credulity on its mettle every now and
then. He tells of one St. Joseph Calasanctius whose house in
Rome he visited ; he visited only the house — the priest has
been dead two hundred years. He says the Virgin Mary ap
peared to this saint. Then he continues :
THE LEGEND OF ARA CCELI. 297
" His tongue and his heart, which were found after nearly a century to be whole,
when the body was disinterred before his canonization, are still preserved in a
glass case, and after two centuries the heart is still whole. When the French
troops came to Rome, and when Pius' VII. was carried away prisoner, blood
dropped from it."
To read that in a book written by a monk far back in the
Middle Ages, would surprise no one ; it would sound natural
and proper ; but when it is seriously stated in the middle of
the nineteenth century, by a man of finished education, an
LL.D., M. A., and an Archaeological magnate, it sounds
strangely enough. Still, I would gladly change my unbelief
for Nelio;an's faith, and let him make the conditions as hard as
O
he pleased.
The old gentleman's undoubting, unquestioning simplicity
has a rare freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading
and telegraphing days. Hear him, concerning the church of
Ara Coeli :
*\
"In the roof of the church, directly above the high altar, is engraved, ' Eegina
Cadi laetare Alleluia." In the sixth century Rome was visited by a fearful pesti
lence. Gregory the Great urged the people to do penance, and a general proces
sion was formed. It was to proceed from Ara Coeli to St. Peter's. As it passed
before the mole of Adrian, now the Castle of St. Angelo, the sound of heavenly
voices was heard singing (it was Easter morn.) ' Eegina Cceli, laetare ! alleluia !
quia quern meruisti portare, alleluia ! resurrexit sicut dixit ; alleluia /' The Pontiff,
carrying in his hands the portrait of the Virgin, (which is over the high altar and
is said to have been painted by St. Luke,) answered, with the astonished people,
' Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia /' At the same time an angel was seen to put up a
sword in a scabbard, and the pestilence ceased on the same day. There are four
circumstances which confirm* this miracle: the annual procession which takes
place in the western church on the feast of St. Mark; the statue of St. Michael,
placed on the mole of Adrian, which has since that time been «alled the Castle of
St. Angelo ; the antiphon Regina Cceli, which the Catholic church sings during
paschal time ; and the inscription in the church."
* The italics are mine.— M. T.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
FEOM the sanguinary sports of the Holy Inquisition ; the
slaughter of the Coliseum ; and the dismal tombs of the
Catacombs, I naturally pass to the picturesque horrors of the
Capuchin Convent. AYe stopped a moment in a small chapel
in the church to admire a picture of St. Michael vanquishing
Satan — a picture which is so beautiful that I can not but think
it belongs to the reviled " Renaissance" notwithstanding I be
lieve they told us one of the ancient old masters painted it —
and then we descended into the vast vault underneath.
Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves ! Evidently the
old masters had been at work in this place. There were six
divisions in the apartment, and each division was ornamented
with a style of decoration peculiar to itself — and these decora
tions were in every instance formed of human bones ! There
were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones ; there were
startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls ; there
were quaint architectural structures of various kinds, built of
shin bones and the bones of the arm ; on the wall were elabo
rate frescoes, whose curving vines were made of knotted human
vertebrae ; whose delicate tendrils were made of sinews and
tendons ; whose flowers were formed of knee-caps and toe-nails.
Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in
these intricate designs (they were by Michael Angelo, I think,)
and there was a careful finish about the work, and an attention
to details that betrayed the artist's love of his labors as well as
his schooled ability. I asked the good-natured monk who ac
companied us, who did this? And he said, " We did it"-
meaning himself and his brethren up stairs. I could see that
LEGEND OF BROTHER THOMAS.
299
the old friar took a high pride in his curious show. We made
him talkative by exhibiting an interest we never betrayed to
guides.
" Who were these people ?"
" We — up stairs — Monks of the Capuchin order — my breth
ren.
VAULTS OF THE CONVENT.
"How many departed monks were required to upholster
these six parlors ?"
" These are the bones of four thousand."
" It took a long time to get enough ?"
" Many, many centuries."
300 LEGEND OF BROTHER THOMAS.
" Their different parts are well separated — skulls in one
room, legs in another, ribs in another — there would be stirring
times here for a while if the last trump should blow. Some
of the brethren might get hold of the wrong leg, in the confu
sion, and the wrong skull, and find themselves limping, and
looking through eyes that were wider apart or closer together
than they were used to. You can not tell any of these parties
apart, I suppose ?"
" Oh, yes, I know many of them."
He put his finger on a skull. " This was Brother Anselmo —
dead three hundred years — a good man."
He touched another. " This was Brother Alexander — dead
two hundred and eighty years. This was Brother Carlo — dead
about as long."
Then he took a skull and held it in his hand, and looked re
flectively upon it, after the manner of the grave-digger when
he discourses of Yorick.
" This," he said, " was Brother Thomas. He was a young
prince, the scion of a proud house that traced its lineage back
to the grand old days of Rome well nigh two thousand years
ago. He loved beneath his estate. His family persecuted him ;
persecuted the girl, as well. They drove her from Rome ; he
followed ; he sought her far and wide ; he found no trace of
her. He came back and offered his broken heart at our altar
and his weary life to the service of God. But look you.
Shortly his father died, and likewise his mother. The girl re
turned, rejoicing. She sought every where for him whose eyes
had used to look tenderly into hers out of this poor skull, but
she could not find him. At last, in this coarse garb we wear,
she recognized him in the street. He knew her. It was too
late. He fell where he stood. They took him up and brought
him here. He never spoke afterward. Within the week he
died. You can see the color of his hair — faded, somewhat —
by this thin shred that clings still to the temple. " This,"
[taking up a thigh bone,] " was his. The veins of this leaf in
the decorations over your head, were his finger-joints, a hun
dred and fifty years ago."
A FESTIVE COMPANY OF THE DEAD. 301
This business-like way of illustrating a touching Story of the
heart by laying the several fragments of the lover before us
and naming them, was as grotesque a performance, and as
ghastly, as any I ever witnessed. I hardly knew whether to
smile or shudder. There are nerves and muscles in our frames
whose functions and whose methods of working it seems a sort
of sacrilege to describe by cold physiological names and surgi
cal technicalities, and the monk's talk suggested to me some
thing of this kind. Fancy a surgeon, with his nippers lifting
tendons, muscles and such things into view, out of the complex
machinery of a corpse, and observing, " Now this little nerve
quivers — the vibration is imparted to this muscle — from here it
is passed to this fibrous substance ; here its ingredients are sep
arated by the chemical action of the blood — one part goes to
the heart and thrills it with what is popularly termed emotion,
another part follows this nerve to the brain and communicates
intelligence of a startling character — the third part glides along
this passage and touches the spring connected with the fluid
receptacles that lie in the rear of the eye. Thus, by this sim
ple and beautiful process, the party is informed that his mother
is dead, and he weeps." Horrible !
I asked the monk if all the brethren up stairs expected to be
put in this place when they died. lie answered quietly :
" We must all lie here at last."
See what one can accustom himself to. — The reflection that
he must some day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or
like a house whose owner is gone, and worked up into arches
and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did not distress this monk
in the least. I thought he even looked as if he were thinking,
with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well on
top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes
which possibly they lacked at present.
Here and there, in ornamental alcoves, stretched upon beds
of bones, lay dead and dried-up monks, with lank frames
dressed in the black robes one sees ordinarily upon priests.
We examined one closely. The skinny hands were clasped
upon the breast ; two lustreless tufts of hair stuck to the skull ;
302
THE GREAT VATICAN MUSEUM.
the skin was brown and sunken ; it stretched tightly over the
cheek bones and made them stand out sharply ; the crisp
dead eyes were deep in the sockets ; the nostrils were painfully
prominent, the
end of the nose
being gone ;
the lips had
shriveled away
from the yel
low teeth : and
brought down
to us through
the circling
years, and pet
rified there,
was a weird
laugh a full
century old !
It was the
jolliest laugh,
but yet the
most dreadful, that one can imagine. Surely, I thought, it
must have been a most extraordinary joke this veteran pro
duced with his latest breath, that he has not got done laughing
at it yet. At this moment I saw that the old instinct was
strong upon the boys, and I said we had better hurry to St.
Peter's. They were trying to keep from asking, " Is — is he
dead ?"
It makes me dizzy, to think of the Vatican — of its wilder
ness of statues, paintings, and curiosities of every description
and every age. The " old masters " (especially in' sculpture,)
fairly swarm, there. I can not write about the Vatican. I
think I shall never remember any thing I saw there distinctly
but the mummies, and the Transfiguration, by Raphael, and
some other things it is not necessary to mention now. I shall
remember the Transfiguration partly because it was placed in
a room almost by itself; partly because it is acknowledged by
DRIED CONVENT FRUIT.
THE GREAT VATICAN MUSEUM.
303
all to be the first oil painting in the world ; and partly because
it was wonderfully beautiful. The colors are fresh and rich,
the " expression," I am told, is fine, the " feeling" is lively, the
" tone " is good, the " depth " is profound, and the width is
about four and a half feet, I should judge. It is a picture that
really holds one's attention ; its beauty is fascinating. It is
fine enough to be a Renaissance. A remark I made a while
ago suggests a thought — and a hope. Is it not possible that
the reason I find such charms in this picture is because it is out
of the crazy chaos of the galleries? If some of the others
were set apart, might not they be beautiful ? If this were set
in the midst of the tempest of pictures one finds in the vast
galleries of the Roman palaces, wrould I think it so handsome ?
If, up to this time, I had seen only one " old master " in each
palace, instead of acres and acres of walls and ceilings fairly
papered with them, might I not have a more civilized opinion
of the old masters than I have now ? I think so. When I
was a school-boy and was to have a new knife, I could not make
up my mind as to which was the
prettiest in the show-case, and I
did not think any of them were
particularly pretty; and so I
chose with a heavy heart. But
when I looked at my purchase,
at home, where no glittering
blades came into competition
with it, I was astonished to see
how handsome it was. To this
day my new hats look better out
of the shop than they did in it
with other new hats. It begins
to dawn upon me, now, that pos
sibly, what I have been taking
for uniform ugliness in the gal
leries may be uniform beauty af
ter all. I honestly hope it is, to others, but certainly it is not
to me. Perhaps the reason I used to enjoy going to the Academy
AT THE STORE.
ARTIST SINS OF OMISSION.
of Fine Arts in New York was because there were but a few
hundred paintings in it, and it did not surfeit me to go through
the list. I suppose the Academy
was bacon and beans in the
Forty-Mile Desert, and a Euro
pean gallery is a state dinner of
thirteen courses. One leaves no
sign after him of the one dish,
but the thirteen frighten away
his appetite and give him. no
satisfaction.
There is one thing I am cer
tain of, though. "With all the
Michael Angelos, the Raphaels,
the Guidos and the other old
masters, the sublime history of
Home remains unpainted ! They
AT IIOME painted Virgins enough, and
popes enough and saintly scare
crows enough, to people Paradise, almost, and these things are
all they did paint. " Nero fiddling o'er burning Rome," the
assassination of Caesar, the stirring spectacle of a hundred
thousand people bending forward with rapt interest, in the
Coliseum, to see two skillful gladiators hacking away each oth
ers' lives, a tiger springing upon a kneeling martyr — these and
a thousand other matters which we read of with a living inter
est, must be sought for only in books — not among the rubbish
left by the old masters — who are no more, I have the satisfac
tion of informing the public.
They did paint, and they did carve in marble, one historical
scene, and one only, (of any great historical consequence.)
And wThat was it and why did they choose it, particularly ? It
was the Rape of the Sabines, and they chose it for the legs and
busts.
I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pic
tures, also — even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and
monks looking down in meditation, and monks skirmishing for
PAPAL PROTECTION OF ART. 305
something to eat — and therefore I drop ill nature to thank the
papal government for so jealously guarding and so industri
ously gathering up these things ; and for permitting me, a
stranger arid not an entirely friendly one, to roam at will and
unmolested among them, charging me nothing, and only re
quiring that I shall behave myself simply as well as I ought to
behave in any other man's house. I thank the Holy Father
right heartily, and I wish him long life and plenty of happiness.
The Popes have long been the patrons and preservers of
art, just as our new, practical Republic is the encourager and
upholder of mechanics. In their Vatican is stored up all that
is curious and beautiful in art ; in our Patent Office is hoarded
all that is curious or useful in mechanics. When a man in
vents a new style of horse-collar or discovers a new and supe
rior method of telegraphing, our government issues a patent
to him that is worth a fortune ; when a man digs up an ancient
statue in the Campagna, the Pope gives him a fortune in gold
coin. We can make something of a guess at a man's character
by the style of nose he carries on his face. The Vatican and
the Patent Office are governmental noses, and they bear a deal
of character about them.
The guide showed us a colossal statue of Jupiter, in the
Vatican, which he said looked so damaged and rusty — so like
the God of the Vagabonds — because it had but recently been
dug up in the Campagna. He asked how much we supposed
this Jupiter was worth ? I replied, with intelligent promptness,
that he was probably worth about four dollars — may be four
and a half. " A hundred thousand dollars !" Ferguson said.
Ferguson said, further, that the Pope permits no ancient work
of this kind to leave his dominions. He appoints a commis
sion to examine discoveries like this and report upon the value ;
then the Pope pays the discoverer one-half of that assessed
value and takes the statue. He said this Jupiter was dug from
a field which had just been bought for thirty-six thousand dol
lars, so the first crop was a good one for the new farmer. I do
not know whether Ferguson always tells the truth or not, but
I suppose he does. I know that an exorbitant export duty is
20
306 IMPROVED SCRIPTURE.
exacted upon all pictures painted by the old masters, in order
to discourage the sale of those in the private collections. I am
satisfied, also, that genuine old masters hardly exist at all, in
America, because the cheapest and most insignificant of them
are valued at the price of a fine farm. I proposed to buy a
small trifle of a Kaphael, myself, but the price of it was eighty
thousand dollars, the export duty would have made it consid
erably over a hundred, and so I studied on it awhile and con
cluded not to take it.
I wish here to mention an inscription I have seen, before I
forget it :
" Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth TO MEN OF
GOOD WILL !" It is not good scripture, but it is sound Catholic
and human nature.
This is in letters of gold around the apsis of a mosaic group
at the side of the scala santa, church of St. John Lateran, the
Mother and Mistress of all the Catholic churches of the world.
The group represents the Saviour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Sil
vester, Constantine and Charlemagne. Peter is giving the
pallium to the Pope, and a standard to Charlemagne. The
Saviour is giving the keys to St. Silvester, and a standard to
Constantine. No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems
to be of little importance any where in Home ; but an inscrip
tion below says, " Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and victory
to King Charles" It does not say, " Intercede for us, through
the Saviour, with the Father, for this boon," but " Blessed Pe
ter, give it us."
In all seriousness — without meaning to be frivolous — without
meaning to be irreverent, and more than all, without meaning
to be blasphemous, — I state as my simple deduction from the
things I have seen and the things I have heard, that the Holy
Personages rank thus in Rome :
First — " The Mother of God " — otherwise the Virgin Mary.
Second— The Deity.
T/iird— Peter.
Fourth — Some twelve or fifteen canonized Popes and martyrs.
Fifth, — Jesus Christ the Saviour — (but always as an infant in
arms.)
SCALE OF SACRED HONORS. 307
I may be wrong in this — my judgment errs often, just as is
the case with other men's — but it is my judgment, be it good
or bad.
Just here I will mention something that seems curious to
me. There are no " Christ's Churches " in Rome, and no
" Churches of the Holy Ghost," that I can discover. There
are some four hundred churches, but about a fourth of them
seem to be named for the Madonna and St. Peter. There are
so many named for Mary that they have to be distinguished by
all sorts of affixes, if I understand the matter rightly. Then
we have churches of St. Louis ; St. Augustine ; St. Agnes ; St.
Calixtus ; St. Lorenzo in Lucina ; St. Lorenzo in Damaso ; St.
Cecilia; St. Athanasius; St. Philip Neri ; St. Catherine, St.
Dominico, and a multitude of lesser saints whose names are
not familiar in the world — and away down, clear out of the
list of the churches, comes a couple of hospitals : one of them is
named for the Saviour and the other for the Holy Ghost !
Day after day and night after night we have wandered I
among the crumbling wonders of Home ; day after day and
night after night we have fed upon the dust and decay of five-
and-twenty centuries — have brooded over them by day and
dreampt of them by night till sometimes we seemed molder-
ing away ourselves, and growing defaced and cornerless, and
liable at any moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be
patched in the legs, and " restored " with an unseemly nose,
and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican
for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble their names
on forever and forevermore.
But the surest way to stop waiting about Home is to stop.
I wished to write a real " guide-book " chapter on this fascina
ting city, but I could not do it, because I have felt all the time /
like a boy in a candy-shop — there was every thing to choose
from, and yet no choice. I have drifted along hopelessly for a
hundred pages of manuscript without knowing where to com
mence. I will not commence at all. Our passports have been
examined. We will go to Naples.
OHAPTEE XXIX.
THE ship is lying here in the harbor of Naples — quaran
tined. She has been here several days and will remain
several more. We that came by rail from Rome have escaped
this misfortune. Of conrse.no one is allowed to go on board
the ship, or come ashore from her. She is a prison, now. The
passengers probably spend the long, blazing days looking out
from under the awnings at Vesuvius and the beautiful city —
and in swearing. Think of ten days of this sort of pastime ! —
'"VVe go out every day in a boat and request them to come
ashore. It soothes them. We lie ten steps from the ship and
tell them how splendid the city is ; and how much better the
hotel fare is here than any where else in Europe ; and how
cool it is ; and what frozen continents of ice cream there are ;
and what a time we are having cavorting about the country
and sailing to the islands in the Bay. This tranquilizes them.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.
I shall remember our trip to Vesuvius for many a day —
partly because of its sight-seeing experiences, but chiefly on
account of the fatigue of the journey. Two or three of us
had been resting ourselves among the tranquil and beautiful
scenery of the island of Ischia, eighteen miles out in the har
bor, for two days ; we called it " resting," but I do not remem
ber now what the resting consisted of, for when we got back
to Naples we had not slept for forty-eight hours. We were
just about to go to bed early in the evening, and catch up on
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.
309
some of the sleep we had lost, when we heard of this Vesuvius
expedition. There was to be eight of us in the party, and we
were to leave Naples at midnight. We laid in some provis
ions for the trip, engaged carriages to take us to Annunciation,
and then moved about
the city, to keep awake,
till twelve. We got away
punctually, and in the
course of an hour and a
half arrived at the town
of Annunciation. An
nunciation is the very
last place under the sun.
In other towns in Italy
the people lie around qui
etly and wait for you to
ask them a question or
do some overt act that
can be charged for — but
in Annunciation they
have lost even that frag
ment of delicacy ; they
seize a lady's shawl from
a chair and hand it to
her and charge a penny ; SOOTHING THE PILGRIMS.
they open a carriage door,
and charge for it — shut it when you get out, and charge for it ;
they help you to take off a duster — two cents ; brush your
clothes and make them worse than they were before — twro
cents; smile upon you — two cents; bow, with a lick-spittle
smirk, hat in hand — two cents ; they volunteer all information,
such as that the mules will arrive presently — two cents — warm
day, sir — two cents — take you four hours to make the ascent —
two cents. And so they go. They crowd you — infest you —
swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look
sneaking and mean, and obsequious. There is no office too
degrading for them to perform, for money. I have had no op-
310 AN UNLOVELY COMMUNITY.
portunity to find out any thing about the upper classes by my
own observation, but from what I hear said about them I judge
that what they lack in one or two of the bad traits the canaille
have, they make up in one or two others that are worse. How
the people beg! — many of them very well dressed, too.
I said I knew nothing against the upper classes by personal
observation. I must recall it ! I had forgotten. What I saw
their bravest and their fairest do last night, the lowest multi
tude that could be scraped up out of the purlieus of Christen
dom would blush to do, I think. They assembled by hundreds,
and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San Carlo, to do —
what ? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman — to de
ride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but
whose beauty is faded now and whose voice has lost its former
richness. Every body spoke of the rare sport there was to be.
They said the theatre would be crammed, because Frezzolini
was going to sing. It was said she could not sing well, now,
but then the people liked to see her, anyhow. And so wre
went. And every time the woman sang they hissed and
laughed — the whole magnificent house — and as soon as she left
the stage they called her on again with applause. Once or
twice she was encored five and six times in succession, and re
ceived with hisses when she appeared, and discharged with
hisses and laughter when she had finished — then instantly en
cored and insulted again ! And how the high-born knaves
enjoyed it ! White-kidded gentlemen and ladies laughed till
the tears came, and clapped their hands in very ecstacy when
that unhappy old woman would come meekly out for the sixth
time, with uncomplaining patience, to meet a storm of hisses !
It was the cruelest exhibition — the most wanton, the most un
feeling. The singer would have conquered an audience of
American rowdies by her brave, unflinching tranquillity (for
she answered encore after encore, and smiled and bowed pleas
antly, and sang the best she possibly could, and went bowing
oft', through all the jeers and hisses, without ever losing coun
tenance or temper :) and surely in any other land than Italy
her sex and her helplessness must have been an ample protec-
MONKISH MIRACLES. 311
tion to her — she could have needed no other. Think what a
multitude of small souls were crowded into that theatre last
night. If the manager could have filled his theatre with Nea
politan souls alone, without the bodies, he could not have
cleared less than ninety millions of dollars. What traits of
character must a man have to enable him to help three thou
sand miscreants to hiss, and jeer, and laugh at one friendless
old woman, and shamefully humiliate her ? He must have all
the vile, mean traits there are. My observation persuades me
(I do not like to venture beyond my own personal observation,)
that the upper classes of Naples possess those traits of charac
ter. Otherwise they may be very good people ; I can not say.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS CONTINUED.
In this city of Naples, they believe in and support one of the
wretch edest of all the religious impostures one can find in
Italy — the miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Janua-
rius. Twice a year the priests assemble all the people at the
Cathedral, and get out this vial of clotted blood and let them
see it slowly dissolve and become liquid — and every day for
eight days, this dismal farce is repeated, while the priests go
among the crowd and collect money for the exhibition. The
first day, the blood liquefies in forty-seven minutes — the church
is crammed, then, and time must be allowed the collectors to
get around : after that it liquefies a little quicker and a little
quicker, every day, as the houses grow smaller, till on the
eighth day, with only a few dozens present to see the miracle,
it liquefies in four minutes.
And here, also, they used to have a grand procession, of
priests, citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high dignitaries of the
City Government, once a year, to shave the head of a made-
up Madonna — a stuifed and painted image, like a milliner's
dummy — whose hair miraculously grew and restored itself
every twelve months. They still kept up this shaving proces
sion as late as four or five years ago. It was a source of great
profit to the church that possessed the remarkable effigy, and
312 AN ITALIAN TRAIT.
the ceremony of the public barbering of her was always car
ried out with the greatest possible eclat and display — the more
the better, because the more excitement there was about it the
larger the crowds it drew and the heavier the revenues it pro
duced — but at last a day came when the Pope and his servants
were unpopular in Naples, and the City Government stopped
the Madonna's annual show.
There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans — two of
the silliest possible frauds, which half the population religiously
and faithfully believed, and the other half either believed also or
else said nothing about, and thus lent themselves to the support
of the imposture. I am very well satisfied to think the whole
population believed in those poor, cheap miracles — a people
who want two cents every time they bow to you, and who
abuse a woman, are capable of it, I think.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS — CONTINUED.
These Neapolitans always ask four times as much money as
they intend to take, but if you give them what they first de
mand, they feel ashamed of themselves for aiming so low, and
immediately ask more. When money is to be paid and re
ceived, there is always some vehement jawing and gesticula
ting about it. One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth
of clams without trouble and a quarrel. One " course," in a
two-horse carriage, costs a franc — that is law — but the hack-
man always demands more, on some pretence or other, and if
he gets it he makes a new demand. It is said that a stranger
took a one-horse carriage for a course — tariff, half a franc.
He gave the man five francs, by way of experiment. He de
manded more, and received another franc. Again he demanded
more, and got a franc — demanded more, and it was refused.
He grew vehement — was again refused, and became noisy.
The stranger said, " Well, give me the seven francs again, and
I will see what I can do " — and when he got them, he handed
the hackman half a franc, and he immediately asked for two
cents to buy a drink with. It may be thought that I am preju-
AN ITALIAN TRAIT.
31S
diced. Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I
were not.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS CONTINUED.
Well, as I was saying, we got our mules and horses, after an
hour and a half of bargaining with the population of Annun
ciation, and started sleepily up the mountain, with a vagrant
at each mule's tail who pretended to be driving the brute along,
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.
but was really holding on and getting himself dragged up in
stead. I made slow headway at first, but I began to get dissat
isfied at the idea of paying my minion five francs to hold my
314 AN ITALIAN TRAIT.
mule back by the tail and keep him from going up the hill,
and so I discharged him. I got along faster then.
We had one magnificent picture of Naples from a high point
on the mountain side. We saw nothing but the gas lamps, of
course — two-thirds of a circle, skirting the great Bay — a neck
lace of diamonds glinting up through the darkness from the
remote distance — less brilliant than the stars overhead, but
more softly, richly beautiful — and over all the great city the
lights crossed and recrossed each other in many and many a
sparkling line and curve. And back of the town, far around
and abroad over the miles of level campagna, were scattered
rows, and circles, and clusters of lights, all glowing like so
many gems, and marking where a score of villages were sleep
ing. About this time, the fellow who was hanging on to the
tail of the horse in front of me and practicing all sorts of un
necessary cruelty upon the animal, got kicked some fourteen
rods, and this incident, together with the fairy spectacle of the
lights far in the distance, made me serenely happy, and I was
glad I started to Vesuvius.
ASCENT OF MOUNT VESUVIUS CONTINUED.
This subject will be excellent matter for a chapter, and to
morrow or next day I will write it.
OHAPTEE XXX.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS CONTINUED.
E Naples and die." "Well, I do not know that one
would necessarily die after merely seeing it, but to
attempt to live there might turn out a little differently. To
see Naples as we saw it in the early dawn from far up on the
side of Vesuvius, is to see a picture of wonderful beauty. At
that distance its dingy buildings looked white — and so, rank
on rank of balconies, windows and roofs, they piled them
selves up from the blue ocean till the colossal castle of St.
Elmo topped the grand white pyramid and gave the picture
symmetry, emphasis and completeness. And when its lilies
turned to roses — when it blushed under the sun's first kiss — it
was beautiful beyond all description. One might well say,
then, " See Naples and die." The frame of the picture was
charming, itself. In front, the smooth sea — a vast mosaic of
many colors ; the lofty islands swimming in a dreamy haze in
the distance ; at our end of the city the stately double peak of
Vesuvius, and its strong black ribs and seams of lava stretch
ing down to the limitless level campagna — a grejen carpet that
enchants the eye and leads it on and on, past clusters of trees,
and isolated houses, and snowy villages, until it shreds out in
a fringe of mist and general vagueness far away. It is from
the Hermitage, there on the side of. Vesuvius, that one should
" see Naples and die."
But do not go within the walls and look at it in detail.
That takes away some of the romance of the thing. The
316 NAPLES STREETS.
people are filthy in their habits, and this makes filthy streets
and breeds disagreeable sights and smells. There never was
a community so prejudiced against the cholera as these Nea
politans are. But they have good reason to be. The cholera
generally vanquishes a Neapolitan when it seizes him, because,
you understand, before the doctor can dig through the dirt
and get at the disease the man dies. The upper classes take a
sea-bath every day, and are pretty decent.
BA.Y OF NAPLES.
The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon,
and how they do swarm with people ! It is Broadway re
peated in every street, in every court, in every alley ! Such
masses, such throngs, such multitudes of hurrying, bustling,
struggling humanity ! We never saw the like of it, hardly
even in New York, I think. There are seldom any sidewalks,
and when there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a
man on without caroming on him. So everybody walks in
the street — and where the street is wide enough, carriages are
forever dashing along. Why a thousand people are not run
over and crippled every day is a mystery that no man can
solve.
But if there is an eighth wonder in the world, it must be the
dwelling-houses of Naples. I honestly believe a good majority
SHOT-TOWER DWELLINGS. 317
of them are a hundred feet high ! And the solid brick walls
are seven feet through. You go up nine flights of stairs be
fore you get to the " first" floor. No, not nine, but there or
thereabouts. There is a little bird-cage of an iron railing in
front of every window clear away up, up, up, among the eter
nal clouds, where the roof is, and there is always somebody look
ing out of every window — people of ordinary size looking out
from the first floor, people a shade smaller from the second,
people that look a little smaller yet from the third — and from
thence upward they grow smaller and smaller by a regularly
graduated diminution, till the folks in the topmost windows
seem more like birds in an uncommonly tall martin-box than
any thing else. The perspective of one of these narrow
cracks of streets, with its rows of tall houses stretching away
till they come together in the distance like railway tracks ; its
clothes-lines crossing over at all altitudes and waving their
bannered raggedness over the swarms of people below ; and
the white-dressed women perched in balcony railings all the
way from the pavement up to the heavens — a perspective like
that is really worth going into Neapolitan details to see.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS CONTESTED.
Naples, with its immediate suburbs, contains six hundred
and twenty-five thousand inhabitants, but I am satisfied it
covers no more ground than an American city of one hundred
and fifty thousand. It reaches up into the air infinitely higher
than three American cities, though, and there is where the
secret of it lies. I will observe here, in passing, that the con
trasts between opulence and poverty, and magnificence and
misery, are more frequent and more striking in Naples than in
Paris even. One must go to the Bois de Boulogne to see
fashionable dressing, splendid equipages and stunning liveries,
and to the Faubourg St. Antoine to see vice, misery, hunger,
rags, dirt — but in the thoroughfares of Naples these things are
all mixed together. Naked boys of nine years and the fancy-
dressed children of luxury ; shreds and tatters, and brilliant
318 SURPRISING WAGES.
uniforms; jackass-carts and state-carriages; beggars, Princes
and Bishops, jostle each other in every street. At six o'clock
every evening, all Naples turns out to drive on the Riviere di
Chiaja, (whatever that may mean ;) and for two hours one may
stand there and see the motliest arid the worst mixed proces
sion go by that ever eyes beheld. Princes (there are more
Princes than policemen in Naples — the city is infested with
them) — Princes who live up seven flights of stairs and don't
own any principalities, will keep a carriage and go hungry ;
and clerks, mechanics, milliners and strumpets will go without
their dinners and squander the money on a hack-ride in the
Chiaja ; the rag-tag and rubbish of the city stack themselves
up, to the number of twenty or thirty, on a rickety little go-
cart hauled by a donkey not much bigger than a cat, and they
drive in the Chiaja ; Dukes and bankers, in sumptuous car
riages and with gorgeous drivers and footmen, turn out, also,
and so the furious procession goes. For two hours rank and
wealth, and obscurity and poverty clatter along side by side in
the wild procession, and then go home serene, happy, covered
with glory !
I was looking at a magnificent marble staircase in the
King's palace, the other day, which, it was said, cost five mil
lion francs, and I suppose it did cost half a million, may be.
I felt as if it must be a fine thing to live in a country where
there was such comfort and such luxury as this. And then I
stepped out musing, and almost walked over a vagabond who
was eating his dinner on the curbstone — a piece of bread and a
bunch of grapes. When I found that this mustang was clerk
ing in a fruit establishment (he had the establishment along
with him in a basket,) at two cents a day, and that he had no
palace at home where he lived, I lost some of my enthusiasm
concerning the happiness of living in Italy.
This naturally suggests to me a thought about wages here.
Lieutenants in the army get about a dollar a day, and com
mon soldiers a couple of cents. I only know one clerk — he
gets four dollars a month. Printers get six dollars and a half
a month, but I have heard of a foreman who gets thirteen.
MARKET REPORT.
319
To be growing suddenly and violently rich, as this man is,
naturally makes him a bloated aristocrat. The airs he puts on
are insufferable.
And, speaking of wages, reminds me of prices of merchan
dise. In Paris you pay twelve dollars a dozen for Jouvin's
best kid gloves ; gloves
of about as good quality
sell here at three or four
dollars a dozen. You
pay five and six dollars
apiece for fine linen
shirts in Paris ; here and
in Leghorn you pay two
and a half. In Mar
seilles you pay forty dol
lars for a first-class dress
coat made by a good
tailor, but in Leghorn
you can get a full dress
suit for the same money.
Here you get handsome
business suits at from
ten to twenty dollars,
and in Leghorn you can
get an overcoat for
fifteen dollars that would
cost you seventy in New York. Fine kid boots are worth
eight dollars in Marseilles and four dollars here. Lyons vel
vets rank higher in America than those of Genoa. Yet the
bulk of Lyons velvets you buy in the States are made in
Genoa and imported into Lyons, where they receive the Lyons
stamp and are then exported to America. You can buy
enough velvet in Genoa for twenty-five dollars to make a five
hundred dollar cloak in New York — so the ladies tell me.
Of course these things bring me back, by a natural and easy
transition, to the
MUSTANG.
320
ISLAND OF CAPRI.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS — CONTINUED.
And thus the wonderful Blue Grotto is suggested to me. It
is situated on the Island of Capri, twenty-two miles from
ISLAND OF CAPRI.
Naples. TVe chartered a little steamer and went out there.
Of course, the police boarded us and put us through a health
examination, and inquired into our politics, before they would
let us land. The airs these little insect Governments put on
are in the last degree ridiculous. They even put a policeman
on board of our boat to keep an eye on us as long as we were
in the Capri dominions. They thought we wanted to steal the
grotto, I suppose. It was worth stealing. The entrance to
the cave is four feet high and four feet wide, and is in the face
of a lofty perpendicular cliff — the sea-wall. You enter in
SEA WONDERS.
321
small boats — and a tight squeeze it is, too. You can not go in
at all when the tide is up. Once within, you find yourself in
an arched cavern about one hundred and sixty feet long, one
hundred and twenty wide, and about seventy high. How
deep it is no man knows. It goes down to the bottom of the
ocean. The waters of this placid subterranean lake are the
brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined. They are as
transparent as plate glass, and their coloring would shame the
richest sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be more
ravishing, no lustre more superb. Throw a stone into the
BLUE GROTTO.
water, and the myriad of tiny bubbles that are created flash out
a brilliant glare like blue theatrical fires. Dip an oar, and its
blade turns to splendid frosted silver, tinted with blue. Let a
man jump in, and instantly he is cased in an armor more gor
geous than ever kingly Crusader wore.
Then we went to Ischia, but I had already been to that
21
322 THE POISONED GROTTO.
island and tired myself to death " resting " a couple of days
and studying human villainy, with the landlord of the Grande
Sentinelle for a model. So we went to Procida, and from
thence to Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed after he sailed from
Samos. I landed at precisely the same spot where St. Paul
landed, and so did Dan and the others. It was a remarkable
coincidence. St. Paul preached to these people seven days
before he started to Rome.
Nero's Baths, the ruins of Baise, the Temple of Serapis;
Cumse, where the Cumsen Sybil interpreted the oracles, the
Lake Agnano, with its ancient submerged city still visible far
down in its depths — these and a hundred other points of inter
est we examined with critical imbecility, but the Grotto of the
Dog claimed our chief attention, because we had heard and
read so much about it. Every body has written about the
Grotto del Cane and its poisonous vapors, from Pliny down
to Smith, and every tourist has held a dog over its floor by the
legs to test the capabilities of the place. The dog dies in a
minute and a half — a chicken instantly. As a general thing,
strangers who crawl in there to sleep do not get up until they
are called. And then they don't either. The stranger that
ventures to sleep there takes a permanent contract. I longed
to see this grotto. I resolved to take a dog and hold him my
self; suffocate him a little, and time him ; suffocate him some
more and then finish him. We reached the grotto at about
three in the afternoon, and proceeded at once to make the
experiments. But now, an important difficulty presented
itself. We had no doer.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS — CONTINUED.
At the Hermitage we were about fifteen or eighteen hun
dred feet above the sea, and thus far a portion of the ascent
had been pretty abrupt. For the next two miles the road was
a mixture — sometimes the ascent was abrupt and sometimes it
was not : but one characteristic it possessed all the time, with
out failure — without modification — it was all uncompromis-
THE SUMMIT BEACHED. 323
ingly and unspeakably infamous. It was a rough, narrow
trail, and led over an old lava flow — a black ocean which was
tumbled into a thousand fantastic shapes — a wild chaos of
ruin, desolation, and barrenness — a wilderness of billowy up
heavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent
asunder — of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted
masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great
vines, trunks of trees, all interlaced and mingled together :
and all these weird shapes, all this turbulent panorama, all
this stormy, far-stretching waste of blackness, with its thrill
ing suggestiveness of life, of action, of boiling, surging,
furious motion, was petrified ! — all stricken dead and cold in
the instant of its maddest rioting ! — fettered, paralyzed, and
left to glower at heaven in impotent rage for evermore !
Finally we stood in a level, narrow valley (a valley that had
been created by the terrific march of some old time irruption)
and on either hand towered the two steep peaks of Vesuvius.
The one we had to climb — the one that contains the active
volcano — seemed about eight hundred or one thousand feet
high, and looked almost too straight-up-and-down for any
man to climb, and certainly no mule could climb it with a
man on his back. Four of these native pirates will carry you
to the top in a sedan chair, if you wish it, but suppose they
were to slip and let you fall, — is it likely that you would ever
stop rolling ? Not this side of eternity, perhaps. We left the
mules, sharpened our finger-nails, and began the ascent I have
been writing about so long, at twenty minutes to six in the
morning. The path led straight up a rugged sweep of loose
chunks of pumice-stone, and for about every two steps for
ward we took, we slid back one. It was so excessively steep
that we had to stop, every fifty or sixty steps, and rest a 'mo
ment. To see our comrades, we had to look very nearly
straight up at those above us, and very nearly straight down
at those below. "We stood on the summit at last — it had
taken an hour and fifteen minutes to make the trip.
"What we saw there was simply a circular crater — a circular
ditch, if you please — about two hundred feet deep, and four
324 THE CRATER.
or five hundred feet wide, whose inner wall was about half a
mile in circumference. In the centre of the great circus ring
thus formed, was a torn and ragged upheaval a hundred feet
high, all snowed over with a sulphur crust of many and many a
brilliant and beautiful color, and the ditch inclosed this like
the moat of a castle, or surrounded it as a little river does a
little island, if the simile is better. The sulphur coating of
that island was gaudy in the extreme — all mingled together in
the richest confusion were red, blue, brown, black, yellow,
white — I do not know that there was a color, or shade of a
color, or combination of colors, unrepresented — and when the
sun burst through the morning mists and fired this tinted
magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled
crown !
The crater itself — the ditch — was not so variegated in color
ing, but yet, in its softness, richness, and unpretentious ele
gance, it was more charming, more fascinating to the eye.
There was nothing " loud " about its well-bred and well-dressed
look. Beautiful? One could stand and look down upon it
for a week without getting tired of it.* It had the semblance
of a pleasant meadow, whose slender grasses and whose vel
vety mosses were frosted with a shining dust, and tinted with
palest green that deepened gradually to the darkest hue of the
orange leaf, and deepened yet again into gravest brown, then
faded into orange, then into brightest gold, and culminated in
the delicate pink of a new-blown rose. Where portions of the
meadow had sunk, and where other portions had been broken
up like an ice-floe, the cavernous openings of the one, and the
ragged upturned edges exposed by the other, were hung with
a lace-work of soft-tinted crystals of sulphur that changed
their deformities into quaint shapes and figures that were full
of grace and beauty.
The walls of the ditch were brilliant writh yellow banks
of sulphur and with lava and pumice-stone of many colors.
No fire was visible any where, but gusts of sulphurous steam
issued silently and invisibly from a thousand little cracks and
fissures in the crater, and were wafted to our noses with every
A POWERFUL TRADITION.
325
breeze. But so long as we kept our nostrils buried in our
handkerchiefs, there was small danger of suffocation.
Some of the boys thrust long slips of paper down into holes
and set them on tire, and so achieved the glory of lighting
their cigars by the flames of Vesuvius, and others cooked eggs
over fissures in the rocks and were happy.
The view from the summit would have been- superb but for
the fact that the sun could only pierce the mists at long inter
vals. Thus the glimpses we had of the grand panorama be
low were only fitful and unsatisfactory.
THE DESCENT.
The descent of the mountain was a labor of only four
minutes. Instead of
stalking down the rug
ged path we ascended,
we chose one which was
bedded knee-deep in
loose ashes, and ploughed
our way with prodigious
strides that would al
most have shamed the
performance of him of
the seven-league boots.
The Vesuvius of to
day is a very poor affair
compared to the mighty
volcano of Kilauea, in
the Sandwich Islands,
but I am glad I visited
it.
it.
It was well worth
THE DESCENT.
It is said that during
one of the grand erup
tions of Vesuvius it discharged massy rocks weighing many
tons a thousand feet into the air, its vast jets of smoke and
326 A POWERFUL TRADITION.
steam ascended thirty miles toward the firmament, and clouds
of its ashes were wafted abroad and fell upon the decks of
ships seven hundred and fifty miles at sea ! I will take the
ashes at a moderate discount, if any one will take the thirty
miles of smoke, but I do not feel able to take a commanding
interest in the whole story by myself.
CHAPTEE XXXI.
THE BURIED CITY OF POMPEII.
THEY pronounce it Pom-^xzy-e. I always had an idea that
you went down into Pompeii with torches, by the way
of damp, dark stairways, just as you do in silver mines, and
traversed gloomy tunnels with lava overhead and some
thing on either hand like dilapidated prisons gouged out of the
solid earth, that faintly resembled houses. But you do nothing
of the kind. Fully one-half of the buried city, perhaps, is
completely exhumed and thrown open freely to the light of
day ; and there stand the long rows of solidly-built brick
houses (roofless) just as they stood eighteen hundred years ago,
hot with the flaming sun ; and there lie their floors, clean-
swept, and not a bright fragment tarnished or wanting of the
labored mosaics that pictured them with the beasts, and birds,
and flowers which we copy in perishable carpets to-day ; and
there are the Yenuses, and Bacchuses, and Adonises, making
love and getting drunk in many-hued frescoes on the walls of
saloon and bed-chamber ; and there are the narrow streets and
narrower sidewalks, paved with flags of good hard lava, the
one deeply rutted with the chariot-wheels, and the other with
the passing feet of the Pompeiians of by-gone centuries ; and
there are the bake-shops, the temples, the halls of justice, the
bat! is, the theatres — all clean-scraped and neat, and suggesting
nothing of the nature of a silver mine away down in the
bowels of the earth. The broken pillars lying about, the door-
less doorways and the crumbled tops of the wilderness of walls,
328
THE BURIED CITY CURIOUS FEATURES.
were wonderfully suggestive of the " burnt district " in one of
our cities, and if there had been any charred timbers, shattered
windows, heaps of debris, and general blackness and smokiness
about the place, the resemblance would have been perfect.
But no — the sun shines as brightly down on old Pompeii
to-day as it did when Christ was born in Bethlehem, and its
streets are cleaner a hundred times than ever Pompeiian saw
them in her prime. I know whereof I speak — for in the great,
chief thoroughfares (Merchant street and the Street of For
tune) have I not seen with my own eyes how for two hundred
years at least the pavements were not repaired ! — how ruts
five and even ten inches deep were worn into the thick flag
stones by the chariot- wheels of generations of swindled tax
payers ? And do I not know by these signs that Street Commis
sioners of Pompeii never attended to their business, and that
if they never mended the pavements they never cleaned them ?
And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street Commis-
THE JUDGMENT SEAT. 329
sioners to avoid tlieir duty whenever they get a chance ? I
wish I knew the name of the last one that held office in Pom
peii so that I could give him a blast. I speak with feeling
on this subject, because I caught my foot in one of those ruts,
and the sadness that came over me when I saw the first poor
skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it, was tempered by
the reflection that may be that party was the Street Commis
sioner.
Xo — Pompeii is no longer a buried city. It is a city of
hundreds and hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze
of streets where one could easily get lost, without a guide, and
have to sleep in some ghostly palace that had known no living
tenant since that awful November night, of eighteen centuries
ago.
We passed through the gate which faces the Mediterranean,
(called the " Marine Gate,") and by the rusty, broken image
of Minerva, still keeping tireless watch and ward over the
possessions it was powerless to save, and went up a long street
and stood in the broad court of the Forum of Justice. The
floor was level and clean, and up and down either side was a
noble colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful Ionic
and Corinthian columns scattered about them. At the upper
end were the vacant seats of the Judges, and behind them we
descended into a dungeon where the ashes and cinders had
found two prisoners chained on that memorable November
night, and tortured them to death. How they must have
tugged at the pitiless fetters as the fierce fires surged around
them !
Then we lounged through many and many a sumptuous
private mansion which we could not have entered without a
formal invitation in incomprehensible Latin, in the olden time,
when the owners lived there — and we probably wouldn't have
got it. These people built their houses a good deal alike.
The floors were laid in fanciful figures wrought in mosaics of
many-colored marbles. At the threshold your eyes fall upon a
Latin sentence of welcome, sometimes, or a picture of a dog,
with the legend " Beware of the Dog," and sometimes a pic-
330
FOOTPRINTS OF THE DEPARTED.
ture of a bear or a faun with no inscription at all. Then you
enter a sort of vestibule, where they used to keep the hat-rack,
I suppose ; next a room with a large marble basin in the
midst and the pipes of a fountain ; on either side are bed
rooms ; beyond the fountain is a reception-room, then a little
garden, dining-room, and so forth and so on. The floors were
all mosaic, the walls were stuccoed, or frescoed, or ornamented
with bas-reliefs, and here and there were statues, large and
small, and little fish-pools, and cascades of sparkling water that
sprang from secret places in the colonnade of handsome pillars
that surrounded the court, and kept the flower-beds fresh and
FORUM OF JUSTICE. — POMPEII.
the air cool. Those Pompeiians were very luxurious in their
tastes and habits. The most exquisite bronzes we have seen in
Europe, came from the exhumed cities of lierculaneum and
Pompeii, and also the finest cameos arid the most delicate
engravings on precious stones ; their pictures, eighteen or nine
teen centuries old, are often much more pleasing than the eel-
. FOOTPRINTS OF THE DEPARTED. 331
ebrated rubbish of the old masters of three centuries ago.
They were well up in art. From the creation of these works
of the first, clear up to the eleventh century, art seems hardly
to have existed at all — at least no remnants of it are left — and
it was curious to see how far (in some things, at any rate,) these
old time pagans excelled the remote generations of masters
that came after them. The pride of the world in sculptures
seem to be the Laocoon and the Dying Gladiator, in Rome.
They are as old as Pompeii, were dug from the earth like
Pompeii ; but their exact age or who made them can only be
conjectured. But worn, and cracked, without a history, and
with the blemishing stains of numberless centuries upon them,
they still mutely mock at all efforts to rival their perfec
tions.
It was a quaint and curious pastime, wandering through this
old silent city of the dead — lounging through utterly deserted
streets where thousands and thousands of human beings once
bought and sold, and walked and rode, and made the place
resound with the noise and confusion of traffic and pleasure.
They were not lazy. They hurried in those days. We had
evidence of that. There was a temple on one corner, and it
was a shorter cut to go between the columns of that temple
from one street to the other than to go around — and behold
that pathway had been worn deep into the heavy flag-stone
floor of the building by generations of time-saving feet ! They
would not go around when it was quicker to go through. We
do that way in our cities.
Every where, you see things that make you wonder how old
these old houses were before the night of destruction came —
things, too, which bring back those long dead inhabitants and
place them living before your eyes. For instance : The steps
(two feet thick — lava blocks) that lead up out of the school,
and the same kind of steps that lead up into the dress circle of
the principal theatre, are almost worn through ! For ages the
boys hurried out of that school, and for ages their parents
hurried into that theatre, and the nervous feet that have been
dust and ashes for eighteen centuries have left their record for
332 FOOTPRINTS OF THE DEPARTED.
us to read to-day. I imagined I could see crowds of gentle
men and ladies thronging into the theatre, with tickets for
secured seats in their hands, and on the wall, I read the imag
inary placard, in infamous grammar, "POSITIVELY No FREE
LIST, EXCEPT MEMBERS OF THE PRESS !" Hanging about the
doorway (I fancied,) were slouchy Pompeiian street-boys utter
ing slang and profanity, and keeping a wary eye out for checks.
I entered the theatre, and sat down in one of the long rows of
stone benches in the dress circle, and looked at the place for
the orchestra, and the ruined stage, and around at the wide
sweep of empty boxes, and thought to myself, " This house
won't pay." I tried to imagine the music in full blast, the
leader of the orchestra beating time, and the " versatile " So-
and-So (who had "just returned from a most successful tour
in the provinces to play his last and farewell engagement of
positively six nights only, in Pompeii, previous to his depart
ure for Herculaneum,") charging around the stage and piling
the agony mountains high — but I could not do it with such a
" house " as that ; those empty benches tied my fancy down to
dull reality. I said, these people that ought to be here have
been dead, and still, and moldering to dust for ages and ages,
and will never care for the trifles and follies of life any more
for ever — " Owing to circumstances, etc., etc., there will not
be any performance to-night." Close down the curtain. Put
out the lights.
And so I turned away and went through shop after shop and
store after store, far down the long street of the merchants,
and called for the wares of Rome and the East, but the trades
men were gone, the marts were silent, and* nothing was left
but the broken jars all* set in cement of cinders and ashes : the
wine and the oil that once had filled them were gone with
their owners.
In a bake-shop was a mill for grinding the grain, and the
furnaces for baking the bread : and they say that here, in the
same furnaces, the exhumers of Pompeii found nice, well
baked loaves which the baker had not found time to remove
from the ovens the last time he left his shop, because circum
stances compelled him to leave in such a hurry.
FOOTPRINTS OF THE DEPARTED. 333
In one house (the only building in Pompeii which no woman
is now allowed to enter,) were the small rooms and short beds
of solid masonry, just as they were in the old times, and on
the walls were pictures which looked almost as fresh as if they
were painted yesterday, but which no pen could have the
hardihood to describe ; and here and there were Latin inscrip
tions — obscene scintillations of wit, scratched by hands that
possibly were uplifted to Heaven for succor in the midst of a
driving storm of lire before the night was done.
In one of the principal streets was a ponderous stone tank,
and a water-spout that supplied it, and where the tired, heated
toilers from the Campagna used to rest their right hands when
they bent over to put their lips to the spout, the thick stone
was worn down to a broad groove an inch or two deep.
Think of the countless thousands of hands that had pressed
that spot in the ages that are gone, to so reduce a stone that is
as hard as iron !
They had a great public bulletin board in Pompeii — a place
where announcements for gladiatorial combats, elections, and
such things, were posted — not on perishable paper, but carved
in enduring stone. One lady, who, I take it, was rich and
well brought up, advertised a dwelling or so to rent, with
baths and all the modern improvements, and several hundred
shops, stipulating that the dwellings should not be put to
immoral purposes. You can find out who lived in many a
house in Pompeii by the carved stone door-plates affixed to
them : and in the same way you can tell who they were that
occupy the tombs. Every where around are things that reveal
to you something of the customs and history of this forgotten
people. But what would a volcano leave of an American city,
if it once rained its cinders on it ? Hardly a sign or a symbol
to tell its story.
In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man
was found, with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key
in the other. He had seized his money and started toward the
door, but the fiery tempest caught him at the very threshold,
and he sank down and died. One more minute of precious
334
FOOTPRINTS OF THE DEPARTED.
time would have saved him. I saw the skeletons of a man, a
woman, and two young girls. The woman had her hands
spread wide apart, as if in mortal terror, and I imagined I
could still trace upon her shapeless face something of the
expression of wild despair that distorted it when the heavens
rained fire in these streets, so many ages ago. The girls and
the man lay with their faces upon their arms, as if they had
tried to shield them from the enveloping cinders. In one
apartment eighteen skeletons were found, all in sitting pos-
IIOUSE. — POMPEII.
tures, and blackened places on the walls still mark their shapes
and show their attitudes, like shadows. One of them, a
woman, still wore upon her skeleton throat a necklace, with
her name engraved upon it — JULIE DI DIOMEDE.
THE BRAVE MARTYR TO DUTY. 335
But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii lias yielded to
modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier,
clad in complete armor • who> true to his duty, true to his
proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage
which had given to that name its glory, stood to his post
by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged
around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not con
quer.
We never read of Pompeii but we think of tlrat soldier ; we
can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant
to him the mention he so well deserves. Let us remember
that he was a soldier — not a policeman — and so, praise him.
Being a soldier, he staid, — because the warrior instinct for
bade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have
staid, also — because he would have been asleep.
There are not half a dozen flights of stairs in Pompeii, and
no other evidences that the houses were more than one story
high. The people did not live in the clouds, as do the Vene
tians, the Genoese and Neapolitans of to-day.
We came out from under the solemn mysteries of this city
of the Venerable Past — this city which perished, with all its old
ways and its quaint old fashions about it, remote centuries ago,
when the Disciples were preaching the new religion, which is
as old as the hills to us now — and went dreaming among the
trees that grow over acres and acres of its still buried streets and
squares, till a shrill whistle and the cry of " All aboard — last
train for Naples /" woke me up and reminded me that I be
longed in the nineteenth century, and was not a dusty mummy,
caked with ashes and cinders, eighteen hundred years old.
The transition was startling. The idea of a railroad train
actually running to old dead Pompeii, and whistling irrever
ently, and calling for passengers in the most bustling and
business-like way, was as strange a thing as one could imagine,
and as unpoetical and disagreeable as it was strange.
Compare the cheerful life and the sunshine of this day with
the horrors the younger Pliny saw here, the 9th of November,
A. D. 79, when he was so bravely striving to remove his
336 THE PERISHABLE NATURE OF FAME.
mother out of reach of harm, while she begged him, with all a
mother's unselfishness, to leave her to perish and save himself.
' By this time the murky darkness had so increased that one might have be
lieved himself abroad in a black and moonless night, or in a chamber where all the
lights had been extinguished. On every hand was heard the complaints of women,
the wailing of children, and the cries of men. One called his father, another his
son, and another his wife, and only by their voices could they know each other.
Many in their despair begged that death would come and end their distress.
" Some implored the gods to succor them, and some believed that this night was
the last, the eternal night which should engulf the universe 1
" Even so it seemed to me — and I consoled myself for the coming death with the
reflection: BEHOLD, THE WORLD is PASSING AWAY!"
* -x- * •& * * •&
After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baise,
of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of
battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the
corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it
never had before : the unsubstantial, unlasting character of
fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and struggled
feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in
generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and
died, happy in the possession of an enduring history and a
deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries flutter away,
and what is left of these things ? A crazy inscription on a
block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle
up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell
wrong) — no history, no tradition, no poetry — nothing that can
give it even a passing interest. AVhat may be left of General
Grant's great name forty centuries hence? This — in the
Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868, possibly :
" URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT — popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces
of the United States of British America, Some authors say nourished about A. D.
742 ; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a cotemporary of Scharks-
pyre, the English poet, and flourished about A. D. 1328, some three centuries after
the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote ' Rock me to Sleep, Mother.' "
These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.
OHAPTEE XXXII.
HOME, again ! For the first time, in many weeks, the
ship's entire family met and shook hands on the
quarter-deck. They had gathered from many points of the
compass and from many lands, but not one was missing ; there
was no tale of sickness or death among the flock to dampen
the pleasure of the reunion. Once more there was a full
audience on deck to listen to the sailors' chorus as they got the
anchor up, and to wave an adieu to the land as we sped away
from Naples. The seats were full at dinner again, the dom
ino parties were complete, and the life and bustle on the upper
deck in the fine moonlight at night was like old times — old
times that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks
so crowded with incident, adventure and excitement, that they
seemed almost like years. There was no lack of cheerfulness
on board the Quaker City. For once, her title was a misno
mer.
At seven in the evening, with the western horizon all golden
from the sunken sun, and specked with distant ships, the full
moon sailing high over head, the dark blue of the sea under
foot, and a strange sort of twilight affected by all these dif
ferent lights and colors around us and about us, we sighted
superb Stromboli. With what majesty the monarch held his
lonely state above the level sea ! Distance clothed him in a
purple gloom, and added a veil of shimmering mist that so
softened his rugged features that we seemed to see him through
a web of silver gauze. His torch was out ; his fires were
smoldering ; a tall column of smoke that rose up and lost
22
338
THE "ORACLE" AT FAULT.
itself in the growing moonlight was all the sign he gave that
he was a living Autocrat of the Sea and not the spectre of a
dead one.
At two in the morning we swept through the Straits of
Messina, and so bright was the moonlight that Italy on the
one hand and Sicily on the other seemed almost as distinctly
visible as though, we looked at them from the middle of a
O
street wre were traversing. The city of Messina, milk-white,
and starred and spangled all over with gaslights, was a fairy
spectacle. A great party of us were on deck smoking and
making a noise, and waiting to see famous Scylla and Cha-
rybdis. And presently the Oracle stepped out with his eternal
spy-glass and squared himself on the deck like another Colossus
of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see him abroad at such an
hour. Nobody supposed he cared anything about an old fable
like that of Scylla and Charybdis. One of the boys said :
AT FAULT. 339
" Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of
night ? — What do you want to see this place for ?"
" What do / want to see this place for ? Young man, little
do you know me, or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish
to see all the places that's mentioned in the Bible."
" Stuff — this place isn't mentioned in the Bible."
" It ain't mentioned in the Bible ! — tiii$ place ain't — well
now, what place is this, since you know so much about it ?"
" Why it's Scylla and Charybdis."
" Scylla and Cha — confound it, I thought it was Sodom and
Gomorrah !"
And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is
the ship story. Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact
that the Oracle was not a biblical student, and did not spend
much of his time instructing himself about Scriptural localities.
—They say the Oracle complains, in this hot weather, lately,
that the only beverage in the ship that is passable, is the
butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as
that article remains in a melted state now since we are out of
ice, it is fair to give him the credit of getting one long word in
the right place, anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in
Rome, that the Pope was a noble-looking old man, but he
never did think much of his Iliad.
We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of
Greece. They are very mountainous. Their prevailing tints
are gray and brown, approaching to red. Little white villages
surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys or roost upon the
lofty perpendicular sea-walls.
We had one fine sunset — a rich carmine flush that suffused
the western sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea. — Fine
sunsets seem to be rare in this part of the world — or at least,
striking ones. They are soft, sensuous, lovely — they are ex
quisite, refined, effeminate, but we have seen no sunsets here
yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame in the track of
the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.
But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon
us of approaching the most renowned of cities ! What cared
340 SKIRTING THE ISLES OF GREECE.
we for outward visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a
thousand other heroes of the great Past were marching in
ghostly procession through our fancies ? What were sunsets
to us, who were about to live and breathe and walk in actual
Athens ; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid
in person for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public
market-place, or gossip with the neighbors about the siege of
Troy or the splendid deeds of Marathon ? We scorned to con
sider sunsets.
We arrived, and entered the ancient harbor of the Piraeus at
last. We dropped anchor within half a mile of the village.
Away off, across the undulating Plain of Attica, could be seen
a little square-topped hill with a something on it, which our
glasses soon discovered to be the ruined edifices of the citadel
of the Athenians, and most prominent among them loomed the
venerable Parthenon. So exquisitely clear and pure is this
wonderful atmosphere that every column of the noble structure
was discernible through the telescope, and even the smaller
ruins about it assumed some semblance of shape. This at a
distance of five or six miles. In the valley, near the Acropolis,
(the square-topped hill before spoken of,) Athens itself could
be vaguely made out with an ordinary lorgnette. Every body
was anxious to get ashore and visit these classic localities as
quickly as possible. No land we had yet seen had aroused
such universal interest among the passengers.
But bad news came. The commandant of the Pirseus came
in his boat, and said we must either depart or else get outside
the harbor and remain imprisoned in our ship, under rigid
quarantine, for eleven days ! So we took up the anchor and
moved outside, to lie a dozen hours or so, taking in supplies,
and then sail for Constantinople. It was the bitterest disap
pointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in
sight of the Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without
visiting Athens ! Disappointment was hardly a strong enough
word to describe the circumstances.
All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and
maps and glasses, trying to determine which "narrow rocky
ANCIENT ATHENS.
341
VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS, LOOKING WEST.
ridge " was the Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which
elevation the Museum Hill, and so on. And we got things
confused. Discussion became heated, and party spirit ran
high. Church members were gazing with emotion upon a hill
which they
said was the
one St. Paul
preached
from, and an
other faction
claimed that
that hill was ' 'fl*^ mill! IF
Hym e 1 1 11 s,
and another
that it was
Pente 1 i con !
After all the
trouble, we
could be cer
tain of only one thing — the square-topped hill was the Acrop
olis, and the grand ruin that crowned it was the Parthenon,
whose picture we knew in infancy in the school books.
We inquired of every body who came near the ship, whether
there were guards in the Piraeus, whether they were strict,
what the chances were of capture should any of us slip ashore,
and in case any of us made the venture and were caught, what
would be probably done to us ? The answers wrere discour
aging : There was a strong guard or police force ; the Piraeus
was a small town, and any stranger seen in it would surely
attract attention — capture would be certain. The commandant
said the punishment would be " heavy ;" when asked " how
heavy ?" he said it would be " very severe " — that was all we
could get out of him.
At eleven o'clock at night, when most of the ship's company
were abed, four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a
clouded moon favoring the enterprise, and started two and two,
and far apart, over a low hill, intending to go clear around the
342 RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.
Piraeus, out of the range of its police. Picking our way so
stealthily over that rocky, nettle-grown eminence, made me
feel a good deal as if I were on my way somewhere to steal
something. My immediate comrade and I talked in an under
tone about quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found
nothing cheering in the subject. I was posted. Only a few
days before, I was talking with our captain, and he mentioned
the case of a man w^ho swam ashore from a quarantined ship
somewhere, and got imprisoned six months for it ; and when
he was in Genoa a few years ago, a captain of a quarantined
ship went in his boat to a departing ship, which was already
outside of the harbor, and put a letter on board to be taken to
liis family, and the authorities imprisoned him three months
for it, and then conducted him and his ship fairly to sea, and
warned him never to show himself in that port again while he
lived. This kind of conversation did no good, further than to
give a sort of dismal interest to our quarantine-breaking expe
dition, and so we dropped it. We made the entire circuit of
the town without seeing any body but one man, who stared at
us curiously, but said nothing, and a dozen persons asleep on
the ground before their doors, wThom we wralked among and
never wroke — but we woke up dogs enough, in all conscience —
we always had one or two barking at our heels, and several
times we had as many as ten and twelve at once. They made
such a preposterous din that persons aboard our ship said they
could tell how we were progressing for a long time, and wrhere
we were, by the barking of the dogs. The clouded moon still
favored us. When we had made the whole circuit, and were
passing among the houses on the further side of the town, the
moon came out splendidly, but we no longer feared the light.
As we approached a well, near a house, to get a drink, the
owner merely glanced at us and went within. He left the
quiet, slumbering town at our mercy. I record it here proudly,
that we didn't do any thing to it.
Seeing no road, wre took a tall hill to the left of the distant
Acropolis for a mark, and steered straight for it over all ob
structions, and over .a little rougher piece of country than
WE BECOME ROBBERS.
343
exists any where else outside of the State of Nevada, perhaps.
Part of the way it was covered with small, loose stones — we
trod on six at a time, and they all rolled. Another part of it
was dry, loose, newly-ploughed ground. Still another part of
it was a long stretch of low grape-vines, which were tangle-
some and troublesome, and which we took to be brambles.
The Attic Plain, barring the grape-vines, was a barren, deso
late, unpoetical waste — I wonder what it was in Greece's Age
of Glory, five hundred years before Christ ?
In the neighborhood of one o'clock in the morning, when
we were heated with fast walking and parched with thirst,
Denny exclaimed, " Why, these weeds are grape-vines !" and
in live minutes we had a score of bunches of larjje, white, deli-
o "
cious grapes, and were reaching down for more when a dark
shape rose mysteriously up out of the shadows beside us and
said " IIo !" And so we left.
In ten minutes more we struck into a beautiful road, and
unlike some
others we
had stum
bled upon at
intervals, it
led in the
right direc
tion. AVe
followed it.
It was broad,
and smooth,
and white —
h a n d s o me
and in per
fect repair,
and shaded
on both sides
for a mile or
so with sin
gle ranks of
trees, and also with luxuriant vineyards.
"no!"
Twice we entered
344
AMONG THE GLORIES OF THE PAST.
and stole grapes, and the second time somebody shouted at us
from some invisible place. Whereupon we left again. We
speculated in grapes no more on that side of Athens.
' Shortly we came upon an ancient stone aqueduct, built upon
arches, and from that time forth we had ruins all about us —
we were approaching our journey's end. We could not see
the Acropolis now or the high hill, either, and I wanted to
follow the road till we were abreast of them, but the others
overruled me, and we toiled laboriously up the stony hill im
mediately in our front — and from its summit saw another—
climbed it and saw another ! It was an hour of exhausting
work. Soon we came upon a row of open graves, cut in the
solid rock — (for a while
one of them served Soc
rates for a prison) — we
passed around the shoul
der of the hill, and the
citadel, in all its ruined
magnificence, burst upon
us ! We hurried across
the ravine and up a
winding road, and stood
on the old Acropolis, with
the prodigious walls of
the citadel towering
above our heads. We
did not stop to inspect
their massive blocks of
marble, or measure their
height, or guess at their
extraordinary thickness,
but passed at once
through a great arched
passage like a railway
tunnel, and went straight to the gate that leads to the ancient
temples. It was locked ! So, after all, it seemed that we were
sot to see the great Parthenon face to face. We sat down and
THE ASSAULT.
AMONG THE GLORIES OF THE PAST. 345
held a council of war. Result: the gate was only a flimsy
structure of wood — we would break it down. It seemed like
desecration, but then we had traveled far, and our necessities
were urgent. We could not hunt up guides and keepers — we
must be on the ship before daylight. So we argued. This
was all very fine, but when we came to break the gate, we
could not do it. We moved around an angle of the wall and
found a low bastion — eight feet high without — ten or twelve
within. Denny prepared to scale it, and we got ready to fol
low. By dint of hard scrambling he finally straddled the top,
but some loose stones crumbled away and fell with a crash
into the court within. There was instantly a banging of doors
and a shout. Denny dropped from the wall in a twinkling,
and we retreated in disorder to the gate. Xerxes took that
mighty citadel four hundred and eighty years before Christ,
when his five millions of soldiers and camp-followers followed
him to Greece, and if we four Americans could have remained
unmolested five minutes longer, we would have taken it too.
The garrison had turned out — four Greeks. We clamored
at the gate, and they admitted us. [Bribery and corruption.]
We crossed a large court, entered a great door, and stood
iipon a pavement of purest white marble, deeply worn by foot
prints. Before us, in the flooding moonlight, rose the noblest
ruins we had ever looked upon — the Propylse ; a small Temple
of Minerva; the Temple of Hercules, and the grand Par
thenon. [We got these names from the Greek guide, who
didn't seem to know more than seven men ought to know.]
These edifices were all built of the whitest Pentelic marble,
but have a pinkish stain upon them now. Where any part is
broken, however, the fracture looks like fine loaf sugar. Six
caryatides, or marble women, clad in flowing robes, support
the portico of the Temple of Hercules, but the porticos and
colonnades of the other structures are formed of massive Doric
and Ionic pillars, whose flutings and capitals are still measur
ably perfect, notwithstanding the centuries that have gone
over them and the sieges they have suffered. The Parthenon,
originally, was two hundred and twenty-six feet long, one hun-
346
AMONG THE GLORIES OF THE PAST.
dred wide, and seventy high, and had two rows of great col
umns, eight in each, at either end, and single rows of «6eventeen
CARYATIDES.
each down the sides, and was one of the most graceful and
beautiful edifices ever erected.
Most of the Parthenon's imposing columns are still standing,
but the roof is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred
and fifty years ago, when a shell dropped into the Yenetian
magazine stored here, and the explosion which followed
wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but little about the
Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and figures for
the use of other people with short memories. Got them from
the guide-book.
As we wandered thoughtfully down the marble-paved length
of this stately temple, the scene about us was strangely im
pressive. Here and there, in lavish profusion, were gleaming
white statues of men and women, propped against blocks of
A FAIRY VISION. 347
marble, some of them armless, some without legs, others head
less — but all looking mournful in the moonlight, and start-
lingly human ! They rose up and confronted the midnight
intmder on every side — they stared at him with stony eyes
from unlooked-for nooks and recesses ; they peered at him
over fragmentary heaps far down the desolate corridors ; they
barred his way in the midst of the broad forum, and solemnly
pointed with handless arms the way from the sacred lane ; and
through the roofless temple the moon looked clown, and banded
the floor and darkened the scattered fragments and broken
statues with the slanting shadows of the columns.
What a world of ruined sculpture was about us ! Set up in
rows — stacked up in piles — scattered broadcast over the wide
area of the Acropolis — were hundreds of crippled statues of all
sizes and of the most exquisite workmanship ; and vast frag
ments of marble that once belonged to the entablatures, cov
ered with bas-reliefs representing battles and sieges, ships of
war with three and four tiers of oars, pageants and processions
— every thing one could think of. History says that the tem
ples of the Acropolis were filled with the noblest works of
Praxiteles and Phidias, arid of many a great master in sculp
ture besides — and surely these elegant fragments attest it.
We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-strewn court
beyond the Parthenon. It startled us, every now and then, to
see a stony white face stare suddenly up at us out of the grass
with its dead eyes. The place seemed alive with ghosts. I
half expected to see the Athenian heroes of twenty centin-ies
ago glide out of the shadows and steal into the old temple
they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride.
The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens,
now. We sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge
of the lofty battlements of the citadel, and looked down — a
vision ! And such a vision ! Athens by moonlight ! The
prophet that thought the splendors of the New Jerusalem
were revealed to him, surely saw this instead ! It lay in the
level plain right under our feet — all spread abroad like a pic
ture — and we looked down upon it as we might have looked
348 A FAIRY VISION — MARS HILL.
from a balloon. We saw no semblance of a street, but every
house, every window, every clinging vine, every projection,
was as distinct and sharply marked as if the time were noon
day ; and yet there was no glare, no glitter, nothing harsh or
repulsive — the noiseless city was flooded with the mellowest
light that ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some
living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its further
side was a little temple, whose delicate pillars and ornate front
glowed with a rich lustre that chained the eye like a spell ; and
nearer by, the palace of the king reared its creamy walls out
of the midst of a great garden of shrubbery that was flecked
all over with a random shower of amber lights — a spray of
golden sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of the
moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage like the
pallid stars of the milky-way. Overhead the stately columns,
majestic still in their ruin — under foot the dreaming city — in
the distance the silver sea — not on the broad earth is there an
other picture half so beautiful !
As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished
'that the illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages
could visit it again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes
—Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion, Pytha
goras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus, Praxiteles and
Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of cele
brated names ! But more than all, I wished that old Diogenes,
groping so patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously
for one solitary honest man in all the world, might meander
along and stumble on our party. I ought not to say it, may
be, but still I suppose he would have put out his light.
We left the Parthenon to keep its watch over old Athens, as
it had kept it for twenty-three hundred years, and went and
stood outside the walls of the citadel. In the distance was the
ancient, but still almost perfect Temple of Theseus, and close
by, looking to the west, was the Bema, from whence Demos
thenes thundered his philippics and fired the wavering patri
otism of his countrymen. To the right was Mars Hill, where
the Areopagus sat in ancient times, and where St. Paul defined
ST. PAUL'S CRITICISM. 3-i9
his position, and below was the market-place where he " dis
puted daily" with the gossip-loving Athenians. We climbed
the stone steps St. Paul ascended, and stood in the square-cut
place he stood in, and tried to recollect the Bible account of
the matter — but for certain reasons, I could not recall the
words. I have found them since :
" Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him,
when he saw the city wholly given up to idolatry.
"Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout
persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
*********
"And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know
what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is ?
*********
" Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I per
ceive that in all things ye are too superstitious ;
" For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this in
scription : To THE UNKNOWN G-OD. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him
declare I unto you." — Acts, ch. xvii."
It occurred to us, after a while, that if we wanted to get
home before daylight betrayed us, we had better be moving.
So we hurried away. When far on our road, we had a parting
view of the Parthenon, with the moonlight streaming through
its open colonnades and touching its capitals with silver. As
it looked then, solemn, grand, and beautiful it will always
remain in our memories.
As we marched along, we began to get over our fears, and
ceased to care much about quarantine scouts or any body else.
We grew bold and reckless ; and once, in a sudden burst of
courage, I even threw a stone at a dog. It was a pleasant
reflection, though, that I did not hit him, because his master
might just possibly have been a policeman. Inspired by this
happy failure, my valor became utterly uncontrollable, and at
intervals I absolutely whistled, though on a moderate key.
But boldness breeds boldness, and shortly I plunged into a
vineyard, in the full light of the moon, and captured a gallon
of superb grapes, not even minding the presence of a peasant
who rode by on a mule. Denny and Birch followed my ex-
350
RETREATING IN GOOD ORDER.
ample. Now I had grapes enough for a dozen, but then
Jackson was all swollen up with courage, too, and he was
obliged to enter a vineyard presently. The first bunch he
seized brought trouble. A
frowsy, bearded brigand
sprang into the road with
a shout, and flourished a
musket in the light of the
moon ! We sidled toward
the Piraeus — not running,
you understand, but only
WE SIDLED, NOT RAX.
advancing with celerity. The brigand shouted again, but still
we advanced. It was getting late, and we had no time to fool
away on every ass that wanted to drivel Greek platitudes to us.
We would just as soon have talked with him as not if we had
not been in a hurry. Presently Denny said, " Those fellows
are following us !"
We turned, and, sure enough, there they were — three ftin-
tastic pirates armed with guns. We slackened our pace to let
them come up, and in the meantime I got out my cargo of
grapes and dropped them firmly but reluctantly into the shad
ows by the wayside. But I was not afraid. I only felt that
it was not right to steal grapes. And all the more so when the
owner was around — and not only around, but with his friends
around also. The villains came up and searched a bundle Dr.
TRAVELING IN MILITARY STYLE. 351
Birch had in his hand, and scowled upon him when they found
it had nothing in it but some holy rocks from Mars Hill, and
these were not contraband. They evidently suspected him of
playing some wretched fraud upon them, and seemed half in
clined to scalp the party. But finally they dismissed us with
a warning, couched in excellent Greek, I suppose, and dropped
tranquilly in our wake. When they had gone three hundred
yards they stopped, and we went on rejoiced. But behold,
another armed rascal came out of the shadows and took their
place, and followed us two hundred y%rds. Then he delivered
us over to another miscreant, who emerged from some myste
rious place, and he in turn to another ! For a mile and a half
our rear was guarded all the while by armed men. I never
traveled in so much state before in all my life.
It was a good while after that before we ventured to steal
any more grapes, and when we did we stirred up another
troublesome brigand, and then we ceased all further specu
lation in that line. I suppose that fellow that rode by on the
mule posted all the sentinels, from Athens to the Piraeus,
about us.
Every field on that long route was watched by an armed
sentinel, some of whom had fallen asleep, no doubt, but were
on hand, nevertheless. This shows what sort of a country
modern Attica is — a community of questionable characters.
These men were not there to guard their possessions against
strangers, but against each other ; for strangers seldom visit
Athens and the Piraeus, and when they do, they go in day
light, and can buy all the grapes they want for a trifle. The
modern inhabitants are confiscators and falsifiers of high re
pute, if gossip speaks truly concerning them, and I freely
believe it does.
Just as the earliest tinges of the dawn flushed the eastern
sky and turned the pillared Parthenon to a broken harp hung
in the pearly horizon, we closed our thirteenth mile of weary,
round-about marching, and emerged upon the sea-shore abreast
the ships, with our usual escort of fifteen hundred Pirsean dogs
howling at our heels. We hailed a boat that was two or three
352
ANCIENT ACROPOLIS.
hundred yards from shore, and discovered in a moment that it
was a police-boat on the lookout for any quarantine-breakers
that might chance to be abroad. So we dodged — we were
used to that by this time — and when the scouts reached the
spot we had so lately occupied, we were absent. They cruised
along the shore, but in the wrong direction, and shortly our
own boat issued from the gloom and took us aboard. They
had heard our
signal on the
ship. We
rowed noise
lessly away,
and before
the police-
boat came in
sight again,
we were safe
at home once
more.
Four more
of our pas
sengers wrere
anxious to
visit Athens,
and started
half an hour
after we re
turned ; but
they had not been ashore five minutes till the police discovered
and chased them so hotly that they barely escaped to their boat
again, and that was all. They pursued the enterprise no further.
We set sail for Constantinople to-day, but some of us little
care for that. We have seen all there was to see in the old
city that had its birth sixteen hundred years before Christ was
born, and was an old town before the foundations of Troy were
laid — and saw it in its most attractive aspect. Wherefore,
why should we worry ?
ANCIENT ACROPOLIS.
RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.
353
Two other passengers ran the blockade successfully last
night. So we learned this morning. They slipped away so
quietly that they were not missed from the ship for several
hours. They had the hardihood to inarch into the Piraeus in
the early dusk and hire a carriage. They ran some danger of
adding two or three months' imprisonment to the other nov
elties of their Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. I admire
" cheek." * But they went and came safely, and never walked
a step.
* Quotation from the Pilgrims.
»
CHAPTEE XXXIII.
inKOM Athens all through the islands of the Greciaiv. Arch
ipelago, we saw little but forbidding sea-walls and bar
ren hills, sometimes surmounted by three or four graceful
columns of some ancient temple, lonely and deserted — a fitting
symbol of the desolation that has come upon all Greece in
these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few vil
lages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and
hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling
desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, appa
rently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Gov
ernment, is a mystery.
I suppose that ancient Greece and modern Greece compared,
furnish the most extravagant contrast to be found in history.
George I., an infant of eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign
office holders, sit in the places of Themistocles, Pericles, and
the illustrious scholars and generals of the Golden Age of
Greece. The fleets that were the wonder of the world when
the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of fishing-
smacks now, and the manly people that performed such mira
cles of valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered
slaves to-day. The classic Illyssus has gone dry, and so have
all the sources of Grecian wealth and greatness. The nation
numbers only eight hundred thousand souls, and there
is poverty and misery and mendacity enough among them to
furnish forty millions and be liberal about it. Under King
Otho the revenues of the State were five millions of dollars —
raised from a tax of one-tenth of all the agricultural products
MODERN GREECE.
355
li __-,£!:?
of the land (which tenth the farmer had to bring to the royal
granaries on pack-mules any distance not exceeding six leagues)
and from extravagant
taxes on trade and
commerce. Out of
that five millions the
small tyrant tried to
keep an army of ten
thousand men, pay all
the hundreds of useless
i
Grand Equerries in
Waiting, First Grooms
of the Bedchamber,
Lord High Chancel
lors of the Exploded
Exchequer, and all
the other absurdities
which these puppy-
QUEEX OF GREECE. kingdoms illdulgC 111,
in imitation of the
great monarchies ; and in addition he set about building a
white marble palace to cost about live millions itself. The
result was, simply : ten into five goes no times and none over.
All these things could not be done with five millions, and Otho
fell into trouble.
The Greek throne, with its unpromising adjuncts of a rag
ged population of ingenious rascals who were out of employ
ment eight months in the year because there was little for
them to borrow and less to confiscate, and a waste of barren
hills and weed-grown deserts, went begging for a good while.
It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and afterwards to va
rious other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and
were out of business, but they all had the charity to decline
the dreary honor, and veneration enough for Greece's ancient
greatness to refuse to mock her sorrowful rags and dirt with a
tinsel throne in this day of her humiliation — till they came to
this young Danish George, and he took it. He has finished
356
IN THE DARDANELLES.
the splendid palace I saw in the radiant moonlight the other
night, and is doing many other things for the salvation of
Greece, they say.
PALACE OF GllEECE.
"We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the nar
row channel they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes
the Hellespont. This part of the country is rich in historic re
miniscences, and poor as Sahara in every thing else. For in
stance, as we approached the Dardanelles, we coasted along the
Plains of Troy and past the mouth of the Scamander ; we saw
where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where it does not
stand now — a city that perished when the world was young. The
poor Trojans are all dead, now. They were born too late to
see Noah's ark, and died too soon to see our menagarie. We
saw where Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused, and away inland
a mountain which the map said was Mount Ida. Within the
ANCHORED BEFORE CONSTANTINOPLE. 357
Hellespont we saw where the original first shoddy contract
mentioned in history was carried out, and the " parties of the
second part " gently rebuked by Xerxes. I speak of the fa
mous bridge of boats which Xerxes ordered to be built over
the narrowest part of the Hellespont (where it is only two or
three miles wide.) A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy
structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the
contractors might have a good effect on the next set, called
them out before the army and had them beheaded. In the
next ten minutes he let a new contract for the bridge. It has
been observed by ancient writers that the second bridge was a
very good bridge. Xerxes crossed his host of five millions of
men on it, and if it had not been purposely destroyed, it would
probably have been there yet. If our Government would re
buke some of our shoddy contractors occasionally, it might
work much good. In the Hellespont we saw where Leander
and Lord Byron swam across, the one to see her upon whom
his soul's affections were fixed with a devotion that only death
could impair, and the other merely for a flyer, as Jack says.
We had two noted tombs near us, too. On one shore slept
Ajax, and on the other Hecuba.
We had water batteries and forts on both sides of the Hel
lespont, flying the crimson flag of Turkey, with its white cres
cent, and occasionally a village, and sometimes a train of cam
els ; we had all these to look at till we entered the broad sea of
Marmora, and then the land soon fading from view, we resumed
euchre and whist once more.
We dropped anchor in the mouth of the Golden Horn at
daylight in the morning. Only three or four of us were up to
see the great Ottoman capital. The passengers do not turn
out at unseasonable hours, as they used to, to get the earliest
possible glimpse of strange foreign cities. They are well over
that. If we were lying in sight of the Pyramids of Egypt,
they would not come on deck until after breakfast, now-a-days.
The Golden Horn is a narrow arm of the sea, which branches
from the Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the
Marmora and Black Seas,) and, curving around, divides the
358 ANCHORED BEFORE CONSTANTINOPLE.
city in the middle. Galata and Pera are on one side of the
Bosporus, and the Golden Horn ; Stambonl (ancient Byzan
tium) is upon the other. On the other bank of the Bosporus
is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople. This great
city contains a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets,
and so crowded together are its houses, that it does not cover
much more than half as much ground as New York City.
Seen from the anchorage or from a mile or so up the Bospo
rus, it is by far the handsomest city we have seen. Its dense
array of houses swells upward from the water's edge, and
spreads over the domes of many hills ; and the gardens that
peep out here and there, the great globes of the mosques, and
the countless minarets that meet the eye every where, invest
the metropolis with the quaint Oriental aspect one dreams of
when he reads books of eastern travel. Constantinople makes
a noble picture.
But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesque-
ness. From the time one starts ashore till he gets back again,
he execrates it. The boat he goes in is admirably miscalcula
ted for the service it is built for. It is handsomely and neatly
fitted up, but no man could handle it well in the turbulent
currents that sweep clown the Bosporus from the Black Sea,
and few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water. It
is a long, light canoe (caique,) large at one end and tapering
to a knife blade at the other. They make that long sharp end
the bow, and you can imagine how these boiling currents spin
it about. It has two oars, and sometimes four, and no rudder.
You start to go to a given point and you run in fifty different
directions before you get there. First one oar is backing wa
ter, and then the other ; it is seldom that both are going ahead
at once. This kind of boating is calculated to drive an impa-
'tient man mad in a week. The boatmen are the awkwardest,
the stupidest, and the most unscientific on earth, without
question.
Ashore, it was — well, it was an eternal circus. People were
thicker than bees, in those narrow streets, and the men wrere
dressed in all the outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extrava-
ANCHORED BEFORE CONSTANTINOPLE. 359
gant, thunder-and-lightning costumes that ever a tailor with
the delirium tremens and seven devils could conceive of.
There was no freak in dress too crazy to be indulged in ; no
absurdity too absurd to be tolerated ; no frenzy in ragged dia
bolism too fantastic to be attempted. 'No two men were
dressed alike. It was a wild masquerade of all imaginable
costumes — every struggling throng in every street was a dis
solving view of stunning contrasts. Some patriarchs wore
awful turbans, but the grand mass of the infidel horde wore
the fiery red skull-cap they call a fez. All the remainder of
the raiment they indulged in was utterly indescribable.
The shops here are mere coops, mere boxes, bath-rooms,
closets — any thing you please to call them — on the first floor.
The Turks sit cross-legged in them, and work and trade and
smoke long pipes, and smell like — like Turks. That covers
the ground. Crowding the narrow streets in front of them
are beggars, who beg forever, yet never collect any thing ; and
wonderful cripples, distorted out of all semblance of humanity,
almost ; vagabonds driving laden asses ; porters carrying dry-
goods boxes as large as cottages on their backs ; peddlers of
grapes, hot corn, pumpkin seeds, and a hundred other things,
yelling like fiends ; and sleeping happily, comfortably, serenely,
among the hurrying feet, are the famed dogs of Constantinople ;
drifting noiselessly about are squads of Turkish women, draped
from chin to feet in flowing robes, and with snowy veils bound
about their heads, that disclose only the eyes and a vague,
shadowy notion of their features. Seen moving about, far
away in the dim, arched aisles of the Great Bazaar, they look
as the shrouded dead must have looked when they walked forth
from their graves amid the storms and thunders and earth
quakes that burst upon Calvary that awful night of the Cruci
fixion. A street in Constantinople is a picture which one
ought to see once — not oftener.
And then there was the goose-rancher — a fellow who drove
a hundred geese before him about the city, and tried to sell
them. He had a pole ten feet long, with a crook in the end of
it, and occasionally a goose would branch out from the flock
860
AN INGENIOUS GOOSE RANCHER.
and make a lively break around the corner, with wings half
lifted and neck stretched to its utmost. Did the goose-mer
chant get excited \ "No. He took his pole and reached after
that goose with unspeakable sangfroid — took a hitch round his
neck, and " yanked " him back to his place in the flock with
out an effort. He steered his geese with that stick as easily as
GOOSE-RANCHER.
another man would steer a yawl. A few hours afterward we
saw him sitting on a stone at a corner, in the midst of the tur
moil, sound asleep in the sun, with his geese squatting around
him, or dodging out of the way of asses and men. We came
MARVELOUS CRIPPLES. 361
by again, within the hour, and he was taking account of stock,
to see whether any of his flock had strayed or been stolen.
The way he did it was unique. He put the end of his stick
within six or eight inches of a stone wall, and made the geese
march in single file between it and the wall. He counted
them as they went by. There was no dodging that arrange
ment.
If you want dwarfs — I mean just a few dwarfs for a curi
osity — go to Genoa. If you wish to buy them by the gross,
for retail, go to Milan. There are plenty of dwarfs all over
Italy, but it did seem to me that in Milan the crop was luxu
riant. If you would see a fair average style of assorted crip
ples, go to Naples, or travel through the Roman States. But
if you would see the very heart and home of cripples and
human monsters, both, go straight to Constantinople. A beg
gar in Naples who can show a foot which has all run into one
horrible toe, with one shapeless nail on it, has a fortune — but
such an exhibition as that would not provoke any notice in
Constantinople. The man would starve. Who would pay
any attention to attractions like his among the rare monsters
that throng the bridges of the Golden Horn and display their
deformities in the gutters of Stamboul ? O, wretched impos
tor ! How could he stand against the three-legged woman,
and the man with his eye in his cheek ? How would he blush
in presence of the man with fingers on his elbow ? Where
would he hide himself when the dwarf with seven fingers on
each hand, no upper lip, and his under-jaw gone, came down
.in his majesty? Bismillah ! The cripples of Europe are a
delusion and a fraud. The truly gifted flourish only in the
by-ways of Pera and Stamboul.
That three-legged woman lay on the bridge, with her stock
in trade so disposed as to command the most striking effect —
one natural leg, and two long, slender, twisted ones with feet
on them like somebody else's fore-arm. Then there was a
man further along who had no eyes, and whose face was the
color of a fly-blown beefsteak, and wrinkled and twisted like
a lava-flow — and verily so tumbled and distorted were his fea-
362 THE GREAT MOSQUE.
tures that no man could tell the wart that served him for a
nose from his cheek-bones. In Stamboul was a man with a
prodigious head, an uncommonly long body, legs eight inches
long and feet like snow-shoes. He traveled on those feet and
his hand?, and was as sway-backed as if the Colossus of Rhodes
had been riding him. Ah, a beggar has to have exceedingly
good points to make a living in Constantinople. A blue-faced
man, who had nothing to offer except that he had been blown
up in a mine, would be regarded as a rank impostor, and a
mere damaged soldier on crutches would never make a cent.
It would pay him to get a piece of his head taken off, and cul
tivate a wen like a carpet sack.
The Mosque of St. Sophia is the chief lion of Constantino
ple. You must get a firman and hurry there the first thing.
"We did that. We did not get a firman, but we took along
four or five francs apiece, which is much the same thing.
I do not think much of the Mosque of St. Sophia. I sup
pose I lack appreciation. We will let it go at that. It is the
rustiest old barn in heathendom. I believe all the interest
tjiat attaches to it comes from the fact that it was built for a
Christian church and then turned into a mosque, without much
alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the land. They
made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my
stocking-feet. I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with
a complication of gums, slime and general corruption, that I
wore out more than two thousand pair of boot-jacks getting
my boots off that night, and even then some Christian hide
peeled off with them. I abate not a single boot-jack.
St. Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred
years old, and unsightly enough to be very, very much older.
Its immense dome is said to be more wonderful than St. Pe
ter's, but its dirt is much more wonderful than its dome, though
they never mention it. The church has a hundred and sev
enty pillars in it, each a single piece, and all of costly marbles
of various kinds, but they came from ancient temples at Baal-
bee, Heliopolis, Athens and Ephesus, and are battered, ugly
and repulsive. They were a thousand years old when this
THE GREAT MOSQUE.
363
church was new, and then the contrast must have been ghast
ly — if Justinian's architects did not trim them any. The
inside of the dome is figured all over with a monstrous inscrip
tion in Turkish characters, wrought in gold mosaic, that looks
as glaring as a circus bill ; the pavements and the marble bal-
ustrades are all battered and dirty ; the perspective is marred
every where by a web of ropes that depend from the dizzy
height of the dome, and suspend countless dingy, coarse oil
lamps, and ostrich-eggs, six or seven feet above the floor.
Squatting and sitting in groups, here and there and far and
near, were ragged Turks reading books, hearing sermons, or
receiving lessons like children, and in fifty places were more
364 THE GREAT MOSQUE.
of the same sort bowing and straightening up, bowing again
and getting down to kiss the earth, muttering prayers the
while, and keeping up their gymnastics till they ought to have
been tired, if they were not.
Every where was dirt, and dust, and dinginess, and gloom ;
every where were signs of a hoary antiquity, but with nothing
touching or beautiful about it ; every where were those groups
of fantastic pagans ; overhead the gaudy mosaics and the web
of lamp-ropes — nowhere was there any thing to win one's love
or challenge his admiration.
The people who go into ecstacies over St. Sophia must surely
get them out of the guide-book (where every church is spoken
of as being " considered by good judges to be the most mar
velous structure, in many respects, that the world has ever
seen.") Or else they are those old connoisseurs from the wilds
of New Jersey who laboriously learn the difference between a
fresco and a fire-plug and from that day forward feel privi
leged to void their critical bathos on painting, sculpture and
architecture forever more.
"We visited the Dancing Dervishes. There were twenty-one
of them. They wore a long, light-colored loose robe that
hung to their heels. Each in his turn went up to the priest
(they were all within a large circular railing) and bowed pro
foundly and then went spinning away deliriously and took his
appointed place in the circle, and continued to spin. When
all had spun themselves to their places, they were about five or
six feet apart — and so situated, the entire circle of spinning
pagans spun itself three separate times around the room. It
took twenty-five minutes to do it. They spun on the left foot,
and kept themselves going by passing the right rapidly before
it and digging it against the waxed floor. Some of them made
incredible " time." Most of them spun around forty times in
a minute, and one artist averaged about sixty-one times a min
ute, and kept it up during the whole twenty-five. His robe
filled with air and stood out all around him like a balloon.
They made no noise of any kind, and most of them tilted
their heads back and closed their eyes, entranced with a sort of
THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE COLUMNS. 365
devotional ecstacy. There was a rude kind of music, part of
the time, but the musicians were not visible. None but ^pin
ners were allowed within the circle. A man had to either
spin or stay outside. It was about as barbarous an exhibition
as we have witnessed yet. Then sick persons came and lay
down, and beside them women laid their sick children (one a
babe at the breast,) and the patriarch of the Dervishes walked
upon their bodies. He was supposed to cure their diseases by
trampling upon their breasts or backs or standing on the back
of their necks. This is well enough for a people who think
all their affairs are made or marred by viewless spirits of
the air — by giants, gnomes, and genii — and who still believe,
to this day, all the wild tales in the Arabian Nights. Even so
an intelligent missionary tells me.
"We visited the Thousand and One Columns. I do not know
what it was originally intended for, but they said it was built
for a reservoir. It is situated in the centre of Constantinople.
You go down a flight of stone steps in the middle of a barren
place, and there you are. You are forty feet under ground,
and in the midst of a perfect wilderness of tall, slender, gran
ite columns, of Byzantine architecture. Stand where you
would, or change your position as often as you pleased, you
were always a centre from which radiated a dozen long arch
ways and colonnades that lost themselves in distance and the
sombre twilight of the place. This old dried-up reservoir is
occupied by a few ghostly silk-spinners now, and one of them
showed me a cross cut high up in one of the pillars. I sup
pose he meant me to understand that the institution was there
before the Turkish occupation, and I thought he made a re
mark to that effect ; but he must have had an impediment in
his speech, for I did not understand him.
We took off our shoes and went into the marble mausoleum
of the Sultan Mahmoud, the neatest piece of architecture, in
side, that I have seen lately. Mahmoud's tomb was covered
with a black velvet pall, which was elaborately embroidered
with silver ; it stood within a fancy silver railing ; at the sides
and corners were silver candlesticks that \vould weigh more
366 THE SULTAN'S TOMB.
than a hundred pounds, and they supported candles as large as
a man's leg ; on the top of the sarcophagus was a fez, with a
handsome diamond ornament upon it, which an attendant said
cost a hundred thousand pounds, and lied like a Turk when
he said it. Mahmoud's whole family were comfortably planted
around him.
TURKISH MAUSOLEUM.
"We went to the great Bazaar in Stamboul, of course, and I
shall not describe it further than to say it is a monstrous hive
of little shops — thousands, I should say — all under one roof,
and cut up into innumerable little blocks by narrow streets
which are arched overhead. One street is devoted to a partic
ular kind of merchandise, another to another, and so on.
THE GREAT BAZAAR. 367
When you wish to buy a pair of shoes you have the swing of
the whole street — you do not have to walk yourself down
liuntiiiff stores in different localities. It is the same with silks,
o
antiquities, shawls, etc. The place is crowded with people all
the time, and as the gay-colored Eastern fabrics are lavishly
displayed before every shop, the great Bazaar of Stamboul is
one of the sights that are worth seeing. It is full of life, and
stir, and business, dirt, beggars, asses, yelling peddlers, porters,
dervishes, high-born Turkish female shoppers, Greeks, and
weird-looking and weirdly dressed Mohammedans from the
mountains and the far provinces — and the only solitary thing
one does not smell when he is in the Great Bazaar, is some
thing which smells good.
CHAPTER XXXIY.
MOSQUES are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are
plenty, but morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran
does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural in
stincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan
has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy.
It makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing per
mitted here in Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt
Lake, however.
Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantino
ple by their parents, but not publicly. The great slave marts
we have all read so much about- — where tender young girls
were stripped for inspection, and criticised and discussed just
as if they were horses at an agricultural fair — no longer exist.
The exhibition and the sales are private now. Stocks are up,
just at present, partly because of a brisk demand created by
the recent return of the Sultan's suite from the courts of
Europe ; partly on account of an unusual abundance of bread-
stuffs, which leaves holders nntortured by hunger and enables
them to hold back for high prices ; and partly because buyers
are too weak to bear the market, while sellers are amply pre
pared to bull it. Under these circumstances, if the American
metropolitan newspapers were published here in Constantino
ple, their next commercial report would read about as follows,
I suppose :
SLAVE GIRL MARKET REPORT.
"Best brands Circassians, crop of 1850, £200; 1852, £250; 1854, £300. Best
brands Georgian, none in market; second quality, 1851, £180. Nineteen fair to
SCARCITY OF MORALS AND WHISKEY. 369
middling Wallacbian girls offered at £130 @ 150, but no takers; sixteen prime A 1
Bold in small lots to close out — terms private.
"Sales of one lot Circassians, prime to good, 1852 to 1854, at £240 @ 242|, buyer
30; one forty-niner — damaged — at £23, seller ten, no deposit. Several Georgians,
fancy brands, 1852, changed hands to fill orders. The Georgians now on hand are
mostly last year's crop, which was unusually poor. The new crop is a little back
ward, but will be coming in shortly. As regards its quantity and quality, the ac
counts are most encouraging. In this connection we can safely say, also, that the
new crop of Circassians is looking extremely well. His Majesty the Sultan has
already sent in large orders for his new harem, which will be finished within a fort
night, and this has naturally strengthened the market and given Circassian stock a
strong upward tendency. Taking advantage of the inflated market, many of our
shrewdest operators are selling short. There are hints of a "corner" on Walla-
chians.
" There is nothing new in Nubians. Slow sale.
"Eunuchs — None offering; however, large cargoes are expected from Egypt to
day."
I think the above would be about the style of the commer
cial report. Prices are pretty high now, and holders firm ;
but, two or three years ago, parents in a starving condition
brought their young daughters down here and sold them for
even twenty and thirty dollars, when they could do no better,
simply to save themselves and the girls from dying of want.
It is sad to think of so distressing a thing as this, and I for one
am sincerely glad the prices are up again.
Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There is no gain
saying that. Greek, Turkish and Armenian morals consist only
in attending church regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and
in breaking the ten commandments all the balance of the week.
It comes natural to them to lie and cheat in the first place, and
then they go on and improve on nature until they arrive at
perfection. In recommending his son to a merchant as a val
uable salesman, a father does not say he is a nice, moral, up
right boy, and goes to Sunday School and is honest, but he
says, " This boy is worth his weight in broad pieces of a hun
dred — for behold, he will cheat whomsoever hath dealings
with him, and from the Euxine to the waters of Marmora there
abideth not so gifted a liar !" How is that for a recommenda
tion ? The Missionaries tell me that they hear encomiums like
that passed upon people every day. They say of a person they
24
370 THE SLANDERED DOGS.
admire, " Ah, he is a charming swindler, and a most exquisite
liar!"
Every body lies and cheats — every body who is in business,
at any rate. Even foreigners soon have to come down to the
custom of the country, and they do not buy and sell long in
Constantinople till they lie and cheat like a Greek. I say
like a Greek, because the Greeks are called the worst trans
gressors in this line. Several Americans long resident in Con
stantinople contend that most Turks are pretty trustworthy,
but few claim that the Greeks have any virtues that a man can
discover — at least without a fire assay.
I am half willing to believe that the celebrated dogs of Con
stantinople have been misrepresented — slandered. I have
always been led to suppose that they were so thick in the
streets that they blocked the way; that they moved about in
organized companies, platoons and regiments, and took what
they wanted by determined and ferocious assault ; and that at
night they drowned all other sounds with their terrible howl-
ings. The dogs I see here can not be those I have read of.
I find them every where, but not in strong force. The most
I have found together has been about ten or twenty. And
night or day a fair proportion of them were sound asleep.
Those that were not asleep always looked as if they wanted
to be. I never saw such utterly wretched, starving, sad- vis-
aged, broken-hearted looking curs in my life. It seemed a
grim satire to accuse such brutes as these of taking things by
force of arms. They hardly seemed to have strength enough
or ambition enough to walk across the street — I do not know
that I have seen one walk that far yet. They are mangy and
bruised and mutilated, and often you see one with the hair
singed off him in such wide and well defined tracts that he
looks like a map of the new Territories. They are the sorriest
beasts that breathe — the most abject — the most pitiful. In
their faces is a settled expression of melancholy, an air of hope
less despondency. The hairless patches on a scalded dog are
preferred by the fleas of Constantinople to a wider range on a
healthier dog ; and the exposed places suit the fleas exactly. I
SOCIAL STATUS OF THE DOGS
371
saw a dog of tins kind start to nibble at a flea — a fly attracted
his attention, and lie made a snatch at him ; the flea called for
him once more, and that forever unsettled him ; he looked
sadly at his flea-pasture, then sadly looked at his bald spot.
Then he heaved a sigh and dropped his head resignedly upon
his paws. He was not equal to the situation.
SLANDERED DOGS.
The dogs sleep in the streets, all over the city. From one
end of the street to the other, I suppose they will average
about eight or ten to a block. Sometimes, of course, there are
fifteen or twenty to a block. They do not belong to any body,
and they seem to have no close personal friendships among each
other. But they district the city themselves, and the dogs of
each district, whether it be half a block in extent, or ten
blocks, have to remain within its bounds. Woe to a dog if he
crosses the line ! His neighbors would snatch the balance of
his hair off in a second. So it is said. But they don't look it.
They sleep in the streets these days. They are my com
pass — my guide. "When I see the dogs sleep placidly on,
while men, sheep, geese, and all moving things turn out and
go around them, I know I am not in the great street where the
hotel is, and must go further. In the Grand Rue the dogs
have a sort of air of being on the lookout — an air born of be-
372 SOCIAL STATUS OF THE DOGS.
ing obliged to get out of the way of many carriages every
day — and that expression one Recognizes in a moment. It
does not exist upon the face of any dog without the confines
of that street. All others sleep placidly and keep no watch.
They would not move, though the Sultan himself passed by.
In one narrow street (but none of them are w^ide) I saw three
dogs lying coiled up, about a foot or two apart. End to end
they lay, and so they just bridged the street neatly, from gut
ter to gutter. A drove of a hundred sheep came along. They
stepped right over the dogs, the rear crowding the front, impa
tient to get on. The dogs looked lazily up, flinched a little
when the impatient feet of the sheep touched their raw backs-
sighed, and lay peacefully down again. No talk could be
plainer than that. So some of the sheep jumped over them
and others scrambled between, occasionally chipping a leg with
their sharp hoofs, and when the whole flock had made the
trip, the dogs sneezed a little, in the cloud of dust, but never
budged their bodies an inch. I thought I was lazy, but I am
a steam-engine compared to a Constantinople dog. But was
not that a singular scene for a city of a million inhabitants ?
These dogs are the scavengers of the city. That is their
official position, and a hard one it is. However, it is their
protection. But for their usefulness in partially cleansing
these terrible streets, they would not be tolerated long. They
eat any thing and every thing that comes in their way, from
melon rinds and spoiled grapes up through all the grades and
species of dirt and refuse to their own dead friends and rela
tives — and yet they are always lean, always hungry, always
despondent. The people are loath to kill them — do not kill
them, in fact. The Turks have an innate antipathy to taking
the life of any dumb animal, it is said. But they do worse.
They hang and kick and stone and scald these wretched crea
tures to the very verge of death, and then leave them to live
and suffer.
Once a Sultan proposed to kill off all the dogs here, and
did begin the work — but the populace raised such a howl of
horror about it that the massacre was stayed. After a while,
PERILS OF JOURNALISM IN TURKEY. 373
he proposed to remove them all to an island in the Sea of Mar
mora. No objection was offered, and a ship-load or so was
taken away. But when it came to be known that somehow or
other the dogs never got to the island, but always fell over
board in the night and perished, another howl was raised and
the transportation scheme was dropped.
So the dogs remain in peaceable possession of the streets.
I do not say that they do not howl at night, nor that they do
not attack people who have not a red fez on their heads. I
only say that it would be mean for me to accuse them of these
unseemly things who have not seen them do them with my
own eyes or heard them with my own ears.
I was a little surprised to see Turks and Greeks playing
newsboy right here in the mysterious land where the giants
and genii of the Arabian Nights once dwelt — where winged
horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded enchanted castles —
where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on carpets
that obeyed a mystic talisman — where cities whose houses were
made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand
of the magician, and where busy marts were suddenly stricken
with a spell and each citizen Jay or sat, or stood with weapon
raised or foot advanced, just as he was, speechless and motion
less, till time had told a hundred years !
It was curious to see newsboys selling papers in so dreamy a
land as that. And, to say truly, it is comparatively a new
thing here. The selling of newspapers had its birth in Con
stantinople about a year ago, and was a child of the Prussian
and Austrian war.
There is one paper published here in the English lan
guage — The Levant Herald — and there are generally a number
of Greek and a few French papers rising and falling, strug
gling up and falling again. Newspapers are not popular with
the Sultan's Government. They do not understand jour
nalism. The proverb says, " The unknown is always great."
To the court, the newspaper is a mysterious and rascally insti
tution. They know what a pestilence is, because they have
one occasionally that thins the people out at the rate of two
374
INGENIOUS ITALIAN JOURNALISM.
thousand a day, and they regard a newspaper as a mild form
of pestilence. When it goes astray, they suppress it — pounce
upon it without warning, and throttle it. When it don't go
astray for a long time, they get suspicious and throttle it anyhow,
because they think it is hatching deviltry. Imagine the Grand
Yizier in solemn council with the magnates of the realm,
spelling his way through the hated newspaper, and finally
delivering his profound decision : " This thing means mis
chief — it is too darkly, too suspiciously inoffensive — suppress
it ! Warn the publisher that we can not have this sort of
thing : put the editor in prison !"
THE CENSOR OX DUTY.
The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constanti
nople. Two Greek papers and one French one were sup
pressed here within a few days of each other. No victories of
the Cretans are allowed to be printed. From time to time the
Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors that the
Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that
INGENIOUS ITALIAN JOUKNALISM. 375
editor knows better, lie still has to print the notice. The Le
vant Herald is too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans
to be popular with the Sultan, who does not relish our sympa
thy with the Cretans, and therefore that paper has to be par
ticularly circumspect in order to keep out of trouble. Once
the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper that the
Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different
tenor, from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two
hundred and fifty dollars for it. Shortly he printed another
from the same source and was imprisoned three months for his
pains. I think I could get the assistant editorship- of the Le
vant Herald, but I am going to try to worry along without it.
To suppress a paper here involves the ruin of the publisher,
almost. But in Naples I think they speculate on misfortunes
of that kind. Papers are suppressed there every day, and
spring up the next day under a new name. During the ten
days or a fortnight we staid there one paper was murdered and
resurrected twice. The newsboys are smart there, just as they
are elsewhere. They take advantage of popular weaknesses.
When they find they are not likely to sell out, they approach
a citizen mysteriously, and say in a low voice — " Last copy,
sir : double price ; paper just been suppressed !" The man
buys it, of course, and finds nothing in it. They do say — I do
not vouch for it — but they do say that men sometimes print a
vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously seditious article in
it, distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and clear out till
the Government's indignation cools. It pays well. Confisca
tion don't amount to any thing. The type and presses are not
worth taking care of.
There is only one English newspaper in Naples. It has
seventy subscribers. The publisher is getting rich very delib
erately — very deliberately indeed.
I never shall want another Turkish lunch. The cooking ap
paratus was in the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it
was all open to the street. The cook was slovenly, and so was
the table, and it had no cloth on it. The fellow took a mass
of sausage-meat and coated it round a wire and laid it on a
376 THE NARGHILI FRAUD.
charcoal fire to cook. When it was done, he laid it aside
and a dog walked sadly in and nipped it. He smelt it first,
and probably recognized the remains of a friend. The cook
took it away from him and laid it before us. Jack said, " I
pass " — he plays euchre sometimes — and we all passed in turn.
Then the cook baked a broad, flat, wheaten cake, greased it
well with the sausage, and started towards us with it. It
dropped in the dirt, and he picked it up and polished it on his
breeches, and laid it before us. Jack said, " I pass." We all
passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood pensively
prying slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork.
Then he used the fork to turn the eggs with — and brought
them along. Jack said " Pass again." All followed suit.
We did not know what to do, and so we ordered a new ra
tion of sausage. The cook got out his wire, apportioned a
proper amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and fell
to work ! This time, with one accord, we all passed out. We
paid and left. That is all I learned about Turkish lunches. A
Turkish lunch is good, no doubt, but it has its little draw
backs.
When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental
travel, I want a tourist for breakfast. For years and years I
have dreamed of the wonders of the Turkish bath ; for years
and years I have promised myself that I would yet enjoy one.
Many and many a time, in fancy, I have lain in the marble
bath, and breathed the slumbrous fragrance of Eastern spices
that filled the air ; then passed through a weird and complica
ted system of pulling and hauling, and drenching and scrub
bing, by a gang of naked savages who loomed vast and vaguely
through the steaming mists, like demons ; then rested for a
while on a divan fit for a king ; then passed through another
complex ordeal, and one more fearful than the first ; and,
finally, swathed in soft fabrics, been conveyed to a princely sa
loon and laid on a bed of eider down, where eunuchs, gorgeous
of costume, fanned me while I drowsed and dreamed, or con
tentedly gazed at the rich hangings of the apartment, the soft
carpets, the sumptuous furniture, the pictures, and drank deli-
THE TURKISH BATH. 377
cious coffee, smoked the soothing narghili, and dropped, at the
last, into tranquil repose, lulled by sensuous odors from un
seen censers, by the gentle influence of the narghili's Persian
tobacco, and by the music of fountains that counterfeited the
pattering of summer rain.
That was the picture, just as I got it from incendiary books
of travel. It was a poor, miserable imposture. The reality
is no more like it than the Five Points are like the Garden of
Eden. They received me in a great court, paved with marble
slabs ; around it were broad galleries, one above another, car
peted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted balustrades,
and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty
old mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of
nine successive generations of men who had reposed upon them.
The place was vast, naked, dreary ; its court a barn, its galle
ries stalls for human horses. The cadaverous, half nude var-
lets that served in the establishment had nothing of poetry in
their appearance, nothing of romance, nothing of Oriental
splendor. They shed no entrancing odors — just the contrary.
Their hungry eyes and their lank forms continually suggested
one glaring, unsentimental fact — they wanted what they term
in California " a square meal."
I went into one of the racks and undressed. An unclean
starveling wrapped a gaudy table-cloth about his loins, and
hung a white rag over my shoulders. If I had had a tub then,
it would have come natural to me to take in washing. I was
then conducted down stairs into the wet, slippery court, and
the first things that attracted my attention were my heels. My
foil excited no comment. They expected it, no doubt. It
belonged in the list of softening, sensuous influences peculiar
to this home of Eastern luxury. It was softening enough, cer
tainly, but its application was not happy. They now gave me
a pair of wooden clogs — benches in miniature, with leather
straps over them to confine my feet (which they would have
done, only I do not wear No. 13s.) These things dangled un
comfortably by the straps when I lifted up my feet, and came
down in awkward and unexpected places when I put them on
378
THE TURKISH BATH.
the floor again, and sometimes turned sideways and wrenched
my ankles out of joint. However, it was all Oriental luxury,
and I did what I could to enjoy it.
TURKISH BATH.
They put me in another part of the barn and laid me on a
stuffy sort of pallet, which was not made of cloth of gold, or
Persian shawls, but was merely the unpretending sort of thing
I have seen in the negro quarters of Arkansas. There was
nothing whatever in this dim marble prison but five more of
these biers. • It was a very solemn place. I expected that the
spiced odors of Araby wrere going to steal over my senses now,
but they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag
THE TURKISH BATH. 379
around him, brought me a glass decanter of water, with a
lighted tobacco pipe in the top of it, and a pliant stem a yard
long, with a brass mouth-piece to it.
It was the famous " narghili " of the East — the tiling the
Grand Turk smokes in the pictures. This began to look like
luxury. I took one blast at it, and it was sufficient ; the smoke
went in a great volume down into my stomach, my lungs,
even into the uttermost parts of my frame. I exploded one
mighty cough, and it was as if Vesuvius had let go. For the
next five minutes I smoked at every pore, like a frame house
that is on fire on the inside. Not any more narghili for me.
The smoke had a vile taste, and the taste of a thousand infidel
tongues that remained on that brass mouthpiece was viler still.
I was getting discouraged. Whenever, hereafter, I see the
cross-legged Grand Turk smoking his narghili, in pretended
bliss, on the outside of a paper of Connecticut tobacco, I shall
know him for the shameless humbug he is.
This prison was filled with hot air. When I had got
warmed up sufficiently to prepare me for a still warmer tem
perature, they took me where it \vas — into a marble room,
wet, slippery and steamy, and laid me out on a' raised platform
in the centre. It was very warm. Presently my man sat me
down by a tank of hot water, drenched me well, gloved his
hand with a coarse mitten, and began to polish me all over
with it. I began to smell disgreeably. The more he polished
the worse I smelt. It wras alarming. I said to him :
" I perceive that I am pretty far gone. It is plain that I
ought to be buried without any unnecessary delay. Perhaps
you had better go after my friends at once, because the weather
is warm, and I can not ' keep ' long.' "
He went on scrubbing, and paid no attention. I soon saw
that he was reducing my size. He bore hard on his mitten,
and from under it rolled little cylinders, like maccaroni. It
could not be dirt, for it was too white. lie pared me down in
this way for a long time. Finally I said :
" It is a tedious process. It will take hours to trim me to
the size you want me ; I will wait ; go and borrow a jack-plane."
380 JACK-PLANED BY A NATIVE.
He paid no attention at all.
After a while he brought a basin, some soap, and something
that seemed to be the tail of a horse. He made up a prodi
gious quantity of soap-suds, deluged me with them from head
to foot, without warning me to shut my eyes, and then swabbed
me viciously with the horse-tail. Then he left me there, a
snowy statue of lather, and went away. When I got tired of
waiting I went and hunted him up. He was propped against
the wall, in another room, asleep. I woke him. He was not
disconcerted. He took me back and flooded me with hot wa
ter, then turbaned my head, swathed me with dry frable-cloths,
and conducted me to a latticed chicken-coop in one of the gal
leries, and pointed to one of those Arkansas beds. I mounted
it, and vaguely expected the odors of Araby again. They did
not come.
The blank, unornamented coop had nothing about it of that
oriental voluptuousness one reads of so much. It was more
suggestive of the county hospital than any thing else. The
skinny servitor brought a narghili, and I got him to take it out
again without wasting any time about it. Then he brought
the world-renowned Turkish coffee that poets have sung so
rapturously for many generations, and I seized upon it as the
last hope that was left of my old dreams of Eastern luxury.
It was another fraud. Of all the unchristian beverages that
ever passed my lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is
small, it is smeared with grounds ; the coffee is black, thick,
unsavory of smell, and execrable in taste. The bottom of the
cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch deep. This goes
down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way, and
produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and
coughing for an hour.
Here endeth my experience of the celebrated Turkish bath,
and here also endeth my dream of the bliss the mortal revels
in who passes through it. It is a malignant swindle. The man
who enjoys it is qualified to enjoy any thing that is repulsive
to sight or sense, and he that can invest it with a charm of
poetry is able to do the same with any thing else in the world
that is tedious, and wretched, and dismal, and nasty.
CHAPTEE XXXV.
~TT7"E left a dozen passengers in Constantinople, and sailed
* * through the beautiful Bosporus and far up into the
Black Sea. We left them in the clutches of the celebrated
Turkish guide, " FAR-AWAY MOSES," who will seduce them into
buying a ship-load of ottar of roses, splendid Turkish vest
ments, and all manner of curious things they can never have
any use for. Murray's invaluable guide-books have mentioned
Far-away Moses' name, and he is a made man. He rejoices
daily in the fact that he is a recognized celebrity. However,
we can not alter our established customs to please the whims
of guides ; we can not show partialities this late in the day.
Therefore, ignoring this fellow's brilliant fame, and ignoring
the fanciful name he takes such pride in, we called him Fer
guson, just as we had done with all other guides. It has kept
him in a state of smothered exasperation all the time. Yet we
meant him no harm. After he has gotten himself up regardless
of expense, in showy, baggy trowsers, yellow, pointed slippers,
fiery fez, silken jacket of blue, voluminous wraist-sash of fancy
Persian stuff filled with a battery of silver-mounted horse-
pistols, and has strapped on his terrible scimetar, he considers
it an unspeakable humiliation to be called Ferguson. It can
not be helped. All guides are Fergusons to us. We can not
master their dreadful foreign names.
Sebastopol is probably the worst battered town in Russia or
any where else. But we ought to be pleased with it, neverthe
less, for we hare been in no country yet where we have been
so kindly received, and where we felt that to be Americans
382
OUR KIND RECEPTION IN RUSSIA.
was a sufficient vise for our passports. The moment the anchor
was down, the Governor of the town immediately dispatched
an officer on board to inquire
if he could be of any assist
ance to us, and to invite us to
make ourselves at home in Se-
bastopol ! If you know Rus
sia, you know that this was a
wild stretch of hospitality.
They are usually so suspicious
of strangers that they worry
them excessively with the de
lays and aggravations incident
to a complicated passport sys
tem. Had we come from any
other country we could not
have had permission to enter
Sebastopol and leave again
under three days — but as it
was, we were at liberty to go
and come when and where we
pleased. Every body in Con
stantinople warned us to be
very careful about our pass
ports, see that they were strict
ly en regie, and never to mislay them for a moment : and they
told us of numerous instances of Englishmen and others who
were delayed days, weeks, and even months, in Sebastopol, on
account of trifling informalities in their passports, and for
which they were not to blame. I had lost my passport, and
was traveling under my room-mate's, who stayed behind in
Constantinople to await our return. To read the description
of him in that passport and then look at me, any man could
see that I was no more like him than I am like Hercules. So
I went into the harbor of Sebastopol with fear and trembling —
full of a vague, horrible apprehension that I was going to be
found out and hanged. But all that time my true passport
FAR-AWAY MOSES.
MELANCHOLY SEBASTOPOL. 383
had been floating gallantly overhead — and behold it was only
our flag. They never asked us for any other.
We have had a great many Russian and English gentlemen
and ladies on board to-day, and the time has passed cheerfully
away. They were all happy-spirited people, and I never
heard our mother tongue sound so pleasantly as it did when it
fell from those English lips in this far-off land. I talked to
the Russians a good deal, just to be friendly, and they talked
to me from the same motive ; I am sure that both enjoyed the
conversation, but never a word of it either of us understood.
I did most of my talking to those English people though, and
I am sorry we can not carry some of them along with us.
We have gone whithersoever we chose, to-day, and have met
with nothing but the kindest attentions. Nobody inquired
whether we had any passports or not.
Several of the officers of the Government have suggested
that we take the ship to a little watering-place thirty miles
from here, and pay the Emperor of Russia a visit. He is rus
ticating there. These officers said they would take it upon
themselves to insure us a cordial reception. They said if we
would go, they would not only telegraph the Emperor, but
send a special courier overland to announce our coming. Our
time is so short, though, and more especially our coal is so
nearly out, that we judged it best to forego the rare pleasure
of holding social intercourse with an Emperor.
Ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebasto-
pol. Here, you may look in whatsoever direction you please,
and your eye encounters scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ru
in ! — fragments of houses, crumbled walls, torn and ragged hills,
devastation every where ! It is as if a mighty earthquake had
spent all its terrible forces upon this one little spot. Eor
eighteen long months the storms of war beat upon the helpless
town, and left it at last the saddest wreck that ever the sun
has looked upon. Not one solitary house escaped unscathed—
not one remained habitable, even. Such utter and complete
ruin one could hardly conceive of. The houses had all been
solid, dressed stone structures ; most of them were ploughed
38-i DESPERATE FIGHTING.
through and through by cannon balls — unroofed and sliced
clown from eaves to foundation — and now a row of them, half
a mile long, looks merely like an endless procession of battered
chimneys. No semblance of a house remains in such as
these. Some of the larger buildings had corners knocked off":
^* O
pillars cut in two ; cornices smashed ; holes driven straight
through the walls. Many of these holes are as round and as
cleanly cut as if they had been made with an auger. Others
are half pierced through, and the clean impression is there
in the rock, as smooth and as shapely as if it were done in
putty. Here and there a ball still sticks in a wall, and from it
iron tears trickle down and discolor the stone.
The battle-fields were pretty close together. The Malakoff
tower is on a hill which is right in the edge of the town. The
Redan was within rifle-shot of the Malakoff; Inkerrnan was a
mile away ; and Balaklava removed but an hour's ride. The
French ^trenches, by which they approached and invested the
Malakoff were carried so close under its sloping sides that
one might have stood by the Russian guns and tossed a stone
into them. Repeatedly, during three terrible days, they
swarmed up the little Malakoff hill, and were beaten back
writh terrible slaughter. Finally, they captured the place, and
drove the Russians out, who then tried to retreat into the town,
but the English had taken the Redan, and shut them off with
a wall of flame ; there was nothing for them to do but go back
and retake the Malakoff or die under its guns. They did go
back ; they took the Malakoff and retook it two or three times,
but their desperate valor could not avail, and they had to give
up at last.
These fearful fields, where such tempests of death used to
rage, are peaceful enough now ; no sound is heard, hardly a
living thing moves about them, they are lonely and silent —
their desolation is complete.
There was nothing else to do, and so every body went to
hunting relics. They have stocked the ship with them. They
brought them from the Malakoff, from the Redan, Inkerman,
Balaklava — every where. They have brought cannon balls,
DESPERATE FIGHTING. 385
broken ramrods, fragments of shell — iron enough to freight a
sloop. Some have even brought bones — brought them labori
ously from great distances, and were grieved to hear the sur
geon pronounce them only bones of mules and oxen. I knew
Blucher would not lose an opportunity like this. He brought
a sack full on board and was going for another. I prevailed
upon him not to go. He has already turned his state-room
into a museum of worthless trumpery, which he has gathered
up in his travels. He is labeling his trophies, now. I picked
up one a while ago, and found it marked " Fragment of a Rus
sian General." I carried it out to get a better light upon it —
it was nothing but a couple of teeth and part of the jaw-bone
of a horse. I said with some asperity :
" Fragment of a Russian General ! This
is absurd. Are you never going to learn
any sense ?"
He only said : " Go slow — the old -woman
won't know any different." [His aunt.]
This person gathers mementoes with a A FRAGMENT.
perfect recklessness, now-a-days ; mixes
them all up together, "and then serenely labels them without
any regard to truth, propriety, or even plausibility. I have
found him breaking a stone in two, and labeling half of it
" Chunk busted from the pulpit of Demosthenes," and the
other half " Darnick from the Tomb of Abelard and Heloise."
I have known him to gather up a handful of pebbles by the
roadside, arid bring them on board ship and label them as com
ing from twenty celebrated localities five hundred miles apart.
I remonstrate against these outrages upon reason and truth, of
course, but it does no good. I get the same tranquil, unan
swerable reply every time :
" It don't signify — the old woman won't know any different."
Ever since we three or four fortunate ones made the mid
night trip to Athens, it has afforded him genuine satisfaction
to give every body in the ship a pebble from the Mars-hill
where St. Paul preached. He got all those pebbles on the sea
shore, abreast the ship, but professes to have gathered them
25
380
DESPERATE FIGHTING.
from one of our party. However, it is not of any use for me
to expose the deception — it affords him pleasure, and does no
harm to any body. He says he never expects to run out of
mementoes of St. Paul as long as he is in reach of a sand
bank. Well, he is no worse than others. I notice that all
travelers supply deficiencies in their collections in the same
way. I shall never have any confidence in such things again
while I live.
CHAPTEE XXXVI.
~TTT~E have got so far east, now — a hundred and fifty-five
* V degrees of longitude from San Francisco — that my
watch can not " keep the hang " of the time any more. It has
grown discouraged, and stopped. I think it did a wise thing.
The difference in time between Sebastopol and the Pacific
coast is enormous. When it is six o'clock in the morning here,
it is somewhere about week before last in California. We are
excusable for getting a little tangled as to time. These dis
tractions and distresses about the time have worried me so
much that I was afraid my mind was so much affected that I
never would have any appreciation of time again ; but when
I noticed how handy I was yet about comprehending when it
was dinner-time, a blessed tranquillity settled down upon me,
and I am tortured with doubts and fears no more.
Odessa is about twenty hours' run from Sebastopol, and is the
most northerly port in the Black Sea. We came here to get coal,
principally. The city has a population of one hundred and
thirty-three thousand, and is growing faster than any other
small city out of America. It is a free port, and is the great
grain mart of this particular part of the world. Its roadstead
is full of ships. Engineers are at work, now, turning the open
roadstead into a spacious artificial harbor. It is to be almost
inclosed by massive stone piers, one of which will extend into
the sea over three thousand feet in a straight line.
I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I
" raised the hill " and stood in Odessa for the first time. It
looked just like an American city ; fine, broad streets, and
388 IMITATION AMERICAN TOWN.
straight as well ; low houses, (two or three stories,) wide, neat,
and free from any quaintness of architectural ornamentation ;
locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they call them acacias ;)
a stirring, business-look about the streets and the stores ; fast
walkers ; a familiar new look about the houses and every
thing ; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that
was so like a message from our own dear native land that we
could hardly refrain from shedding a few grateful tears and
execrations in the old time-honored American way. Look up
the street or down the street, this way or that way, we saw
only America ! There was not one thing to remind us that we
were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling
in this home vision, and then we came upon a church and a
hack-driver, and presto ! the illusion vanished ! The church
had a slender-spired dome that rounded inward at its base, and
looked like a turnip turned upside down, and the hackman
seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat without any hoops.
These things were essentially foreign, and so were the carriages
— but every body knows about these things, and there is no
occasion for my describing them.
"We were only to stay here a day and a night and take in coal ;
we consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that
there were no sights in Odessa to see ; and so we had one good,
untrammeled holyday on our hands, with nothing to do but
idle about the city and enjoy ourselves. We sauntered through
the markets and criticised the fearful and wonderful costumes
from the back country ; examined the populace as far as eyes
could do it ; and closed the entertainment with an ice-cream
debauch. We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when
we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any
thing about ice-cream at home, but we look upon it with a sort
of idolatry now that it is so scarce in these red-hot climates of
the East.
We only found two pieces of statuary, and this was another
blessing. One was a bronze image of the Due de Richelieu,
grand-nephew of the splendid Cardinal. It stood in a spacious,
handsome promenade, overlooking the sea, and from its base a
PUBLIC INGRATITUDE. 389
vast flight of stone steps led down to the harbor — two hundred
of them, fifty feet long, and a wide landing at the bottom of
every twenty. It is a noble staircase, and from a distance the
people toiling up it looked like insects. I mention this statue
and this stairway because they have their story. Richelieu
founded Odessa — wratched over it with paternal care — labored
with a fertile brain and a wise understanding for its best inter
ests — spent his fortune freely to the same end — endowed it
with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet make it one
of the great cities of the Old World — built this noble stairway
with money from his own private purse — and . Well, the
people for whom he had done so much, let him walk down
these same steps, one day, unattended, old, poor, without a
second coat to his back ; and when, years afterwards, he died
in Sebastopol in poverty and neglect, they called a meeting,
subscribed liberally, and immediately erected this tasteful
monument to his memory, and named a great street after him.
It reminds me of what Robert Burns' mother said when they
erected a stately monument to his memory : " Ah, Robbie, ye
asked them for bread and they hae gi'en ye a stane."
The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go
and call on the Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They
have telegraphed his Majesty, and he has signified his willing
ness to grant us an audience. So we are getting up the an
chors and preparing to sail to his watering-place. What a
scratching around there will be, now ! what a holding of im
portant meetings and appointing of solemn committees ! — and
what a furbishing up of claw-hammer coats and white silk
neck-ties ! As this fearful ordeal we are about to pass through
pictures itself to my fancy in all its dread sublimity, I begin
to feel my fierce desire to converse with a genuine Emperor
cooling down and passing away. What am I to do with my
hands ? What am I to do with my feet ? What in the world
am I to do with myself ?
OHAPTEE XXXVII.
WE anchored here at Yalta, Russia, two or three days
ago. To me the place was a vision of the Sierras.
The tall, gray mountains that back it, their sides bristling with
pines — cloven with ravines — here and there a hoary rock tow
ering into view — long, straight streaks sweeping down from
the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche
of former times — all these were as like what one sees in the
Sierras as if the one were a portrait of the other. The little
village of Yalta nestles at the foot of an amphitheatre which
slopes backward and upward to the wall of hills, and looks as
if it might have sunk quietly down to its present position from
a higher elevation. This depression is covered with the great
parks and gardens of noblemen, and through the mass of green
foliage the bright colors of their palaces bud out here and there
like flowers. It is a beautiful spot.
"We had the United States Consul on board — the Odessa
Consul. We assembled in the cabin and commanded him to
tell us what we must do to be saved, and tell us quickly. He
made a speech. The first thing he said fell like a blight on
every hopeful spirit : he had never seen a court reception.
(Three groans for the Consul.) But he said he had seen recep
tions at the Governor-General's in Odessa, and had often list
ened to people's experiences of receptions at the Kussian and
other courts, and believed he knew very well what sort of
ordeal we were about to essay. (Hope budded again.) He
said we were many ; the summer-palace was small — a mere
PRACTICING FOR THE ORDEAL. 391
mansion ; doubtless we should be received in summer fashion
— in the garden ; we would stand in a row, all the gentlemen
in swallow-tail coats, white kids, and white neck- ties, and the
ladies in light-colored silks, or something of that kind ; at the
proper moment — 12 meridian — the Emperor, attended by his
suite arrayed in splendid uniforms, would appear and walk
slowly along the line, bowing to some, and saying two or three
words to others. At the moment his Majesty appeared, a uni
versal, delighted, enthusiastic smile ought to break out like a
rash among the passengers — a smile of love, of gratification,
of admiration — and with one accord, the party must begin to
bow — not obsequiously, but respectfully, and with dignity ; at
the end of fifteen minutes the Emperor would go in the house,
and we could run along home again. We felt immensely re
lieved. It seemed, in a manner, easy. There was not a man
in the party but believed that with a little practice he could
stand in a row, especially if there were others along ; there
was not a man but believed he could bow without tripping on
his coat tail and breaking his neck ; in a word, we came to
believe we were equal to any item in the performance except
that complicated smile. The Consul also said we ought to
draft a little address to the Emperor, and present it to one of
his aides-de-camp, who would forward it to him at the proper
time. Therefore, five gentlemen were appointed to prepare
the document, and the fifty others went sadly smiling about
the ship — practicing. During the next twelve hours we had
the general appearance, somehow, of being at a funeral, where
every body was sorry the death had occurred, but glad it
was over — where every body was smiling, and yet broken
hearted.
A committee went ashore to wait on his Excellency the Gov
ernor-General, and learn our fate. At the end of three hours
of boding suspense, they came back and said the Emperor
would receive us at noon the next day — would send carnages
for us — would hear the address in person. The Grand Duke
Michael hacf sent to invite us to his palace also. Any man.
could see that there was an intention here to show that Bussia's-
392
RECEIVED BY THE EMPEROR.
friendship for America was so genuine as to render even her
private citizens objects worthy of kindly attentions.
At the appointed hour we drove out three miles, and assem
bled in the handsome garden in front of the Emperor's palace.
YALTA, FROM TilE EMI'EROR'S PALACE.
We formed a circle under the trees before the door, for there
was no one room in the house able to accommodate our three
score persons comfortably, and in a few minutes the imperial
family came out bowing and smiling, and stood in our midst.
A number of great dignitaries of the Empire, in undress uni
forms, came with them. With every bow, his Majesty said a
word of welcome. I copy these speeches. There is character
in them — Russian character — which is politeness itself, and the
genuine article. The French are polite, but it is often mere
ceremonious politeness, A Russian imbues his polite things
with a heartiness, both of phrase and expression, that compels
RECEIVED BY THE EMPEROR.
393
belief in their sincerity. As I was saying, the Czar punctu
ated his speeches with bows :
" Good morning — I am glad to see you — I am gratified — I
am delighted — I am happy to receive you !"
All took off their hats, and the Consul inflicted the address
on him. He bore it with unflinching fortitude ; then took the
rusty -looking document and handed it to some great officer or
other, to be filed away
among the archives of
Russia — in the stove. He
thanked us for the ad
dress, and said he was
very much pleased to see
us, especially as such
friendly relations existed
between Russia and the
United States. The Em
press said the Americans
were favorites in Russia,
and she hoped the Rus
sians were similarly re
garded in America.
These were all the speech
es that were made, and I
recommend them to parties who present policemen \vith gold
watches, as models of brevity and point. After this the Em
press wrent and talked sociably (for an Empress) with various
ladies around the circle ; several gentlemen entered into a dis
jointed general conversation with the Emperor ; the Dukes
and Princes, Admirals and Maids of Honor dropped into free-
and-easy chat with first one and then another of our party, and
whoever chose stepped forward and spoke with the modest
little Grand Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is four
teen years old, light-haired, blue-eyed, unassuming and pretty.
Every body talks English.
The Emperor wore a cap, frock coat and pantaloons, all of
some kind of plain white drilling — cotton or linen — and sport-
EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.
394 CONCENTRATED POWER.
ed no jewelry or any insignia whatever of rank. No costume
could be less ostentatious. He is very tall and spare, and a
determined-looking man, though a very pleasant-looking one,
nevertheless. It is easy to see that he is kind and affectionate.
There is something very noble in his expression when his cap
is off. There is none of that cunning in his eye that all of us
noticed in Louis Napoleon's.
The Empress and the little Grand Duchess wore simple suits
of foulard (or foulard silk, I don't know which is proper,) with
a small blue spot in it ; the dresses were trimmed with blue ;
both ladies wore broad blue sashes about their waists ; linen
collars and clerical ties of muslin ; low-crowned straw-hats
trimmed with blue velvet ; parasols and flesh-colored gloves.
The Grand Duchess had no heels on her shoes. I do not know
this of my own knowledge, but one of our ladies told me so.
I was not looking at her shoes. I was glad to observe that she
wore her own hair, plaited in thick braids against the back of
her head, instead of the uncomely thing they call a waterfall,
which is about as much like a waterfall as a canvas-covered
ham is like a cataract. Taking the kind expression that is in
the Emperor's face and the gentleness that is in his young
daughter's into consideration, I wondered if it would not tax
the Czar's firmness to the utmost to condemn a supplicating
wretch to misery in the wastes of Siberia if she pleaded for
him. Every time their eyes met, I saw more and more what
a tremendous power that weak, diffident school-girl could
wield if she chose to do it. Many and many a time she might
rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word is law to sev
enty millions of human beings ! She was only a girl, and she
looked like a thousand others I have seen, but never a girl
provoked such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A
strange, new sensation is a rare thing in this hum-drum life,
and I had it here. There was nothing stale or worn out about
the thoughts and feelings the situation and the circumstances
created. It seemed strange — stranger than I can tell — to
think that the central figure in the cluster of men and women,
chatting here under the trees like the most ordinary individual
AT THE CROWN PRINCE'S. 395
in the land, was a man who could open his lips and ships
would fly through the waves, locomotives would speed over the
plains, couriers would hurry from village to village, a hundred
telegraphs would flash the word to the four corners of an Em
pire that stretches its vast proportions over a seventh part of
the habitable globe, and a countless multitude of men would
spring to do his bidding. I had a sort of vague desire to ex
amine his hands and see if they were of flesh and blood, like
other men's. Here was a man who could do this wonderful
thing, and yet if I chose I could knock him down. The case
was plain, but it seemed preposterous, nevertheless — as prepos
terous as trying to knock down a mountain or wipe out a con
tinent. If this man sprained his ankle, a million miles of
telegraph would carry the news over mountains — valleys —
uninhabited deserts — under the trackless sea — and ten thousand
newspapers would prate of it ; if he were grievously ill, all
the nations would know it before the sun rose again ; if he
dropped lifeless where he stood, his fall might shake the
thrones of half a world ! If I could have stolen his coat, I
would have done it. When I meet a man like that, I want
something to remember him by.
As a general thing, we have been shown through palaces by
some plush-legged filagreed flunkey or other, who charged a
franc for it ; but after talking with the company half an hour,
the Emperor of Russia and his family conducted us all through
their mansion themselves. They made no charge. They
seemed to take a real pleasure in it.
We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring
the cosy apartments and the rich but eminently home-like
appointments of the place, and then the Imperial family bade
our party a kind good-bye, and proceeded to count the spoons.
An invitation was extended to us to visit the palace of the
eldest son, the Crown Prince of Russia, which was near at
hand. The young man was absent, but the Dukes and Coun
tesses and Princes went over the premises with us as leisurely
as was the case at the Emperor's, and conversation continued
as lively as ever.
31)6 AT THE GKAND DUKEJS.
It was a little after one o'clock, now. We drove to the
Grand Duke Michael's, a mile away, in response to his invita
tion, previously given.
We arrived in twenty minutes from the Emperor's. It is a
lovely place. The beautiful palace nestles among the grand
old groves of the park, the park sits in the lap of the pictu
resque crags and hills, and both look out upon the breezy
ocean. In the park are rustic seats, here and there, in se
cluded nooks that are dark with shade ; there are rivulets of
crystal wrater ; there are lakelets, with inviting, grassy banks ;
there are glimpses of sparkling cascades through openings in
the wilderness of foliage ; there are streams of clear wrater
gushing from mimic knots on the trunks of forest trees ; there
are miniature marble temples perched upon gray old crags ;
there are airy lookouts whence one may gaze upon a broad
expanse of landscape and ocean. The palace is modeled after
the choicest forms of Grecian architecture, and its wide colon
nades surround a central court that is banked with rare
flowers that fill the place with their fragrance, and in their
midst springs a fountain that cools the summer air, and may
possibly breed mosquitoes, but I do not think it does.
The Grand Duke and his Duchess came out, and the pre
sentation ceremonies were as simple as they had been at the
Emperor's. In a few minutes, conversation was under way, as
before. The Empress appeared in the verandah, and the little
Grand Duchess came out into the crowd. They had beaten
us there. In a few minutes, the Emperor carne himself on
horseback. It was very pleasant. You can appreciate it if
you have ever visited royalty and felt occasionally that pos
sibly you might be wearing out your welcome — though as a
general thing, I believe, royalty is not scrupulous about dis
charging you when it is done with you.
The Grand Duke is the third brother of the Emperor, is
about thirty-seven years old, perhaps, and is the princeliest
figure in Russia. He is even taller than the Czar, as straight
as an Indian, and bears himself like one of those gorgeous
knights we read about in romances of the Crusades. He looks
AT THE GRAND DUKE'S. 397
like a great-hearted fellow who would pitch an enemy into the
river in a moment, and then jump in and risk his life fishing
him out again. The stories they tell of him show him to be
of a brave and generous nature. He must have been desirous
of proving that Americans were welcome guests in the imperial
palaces of Russia, because he rode all the way to Yalta and
escorted our procession to the Emperor's himself, and kept his
aids scurrying about, clearing the road and offering assistance
wherever it could be needed. We were rather familiar with
him then, because we did not know who he was. We recog
nized him now, and appreciated the friendly spirit that
prompted him to do us a favor that any other Grand Duke in
the world would have doubtless declined to do. He had plenty
of servitors whom he could have sent, but he chose to attend
to the matter himself.
The Grand Duke was dressed in the handsome and showy
uniform of a Cossack officer. The Grand Duchess had on a
white alpaca robe, with the seams and gores trimmed with
black barb lace, and a little gray hat with a feather of the same
color. • She is young, rather pretty modest and unpretending,
and full of winning politeness.
Our party walked all through the house, and then the nobil
ity escorted them all over the grounds, and finally brought
them back to the palace about half-past two o'clock to break
fast. They called it breakfast, but we would have called it
luncheon. It consisted of two kinds of wine ; tea, bread,
cheese, and cold meats, and was served on the centre-tables in
the reception room and the verandahs — anywhere that was
convenient ; there was no ceremony. It was a sort of picnic.
I had heard before that we were to breakfast there, but Blucher
said he believed Baker's boy had suggested it to his Imperial
Highness. I think not — though it would be like him. Baker's
boy is the famine-breeder of the ship. He is always hungry.
They say he goes about the state-rooms when the passengers
are out, and eats up all the soap. And they say he eats
oakum. They say he will eat any thing he can get between
meals, but he prefers oakum. He does not like oakum for
398 THEATRICAL MONARCHS EXPOSED.
dinner, but he likes it for a lunch, at odd hours, or any thing
that way. It makes him very disagreeable, because it makes
his breath bad, and keeps his teeth all stuck up with tar.
Baker's boy may have suggested the breakfast, but I hope he
did not. It went off well, anyhow. The illustrious host
moved about from place to place, and helped to destroy the
provisions and keep the conversation lively, and the Grand
Duchess talked with the verandah parties and such as had sat
isfied their appetites and straggled out from the reception
room.
The Grand Duke's tea was delicious. They give one a lemon
to squeeze into it, or iced milk, if he prefers it. The former is
best. This tea is brought overland from China. It injures
the article to transport it by sea.
When it was time to go, we bade our distinguished hosts
good-bye, and they retired happy and contented to their apart
ments to count their spoons.
We had spent the best part of half a day in the home of
royalty, and had been as cheerful and comfortable all the time
as we could have been in the ship. I would as soon have
thought of being cheerful in Abraham's bosom as in the palace
of an Emperor. I supposed that Emperors were terrible peo
ple. I thought they never did any thing but wear magnificent
crowns and red velvet dressing-go wns with dabs of wool sewed
on them in spots, and sit on thrones and scowl at the flunkies
and the people in the parquette, and order Dukes and Duch
esses off to execution. I find, however, that when one is so
fortunate as to get behind the scenes and see them at home
and in the privacy of their firesides, they are strangely like
common mortals. They are pleasanter to look upon then than
they are in their theatrical aspect. It seems to come as nat
ural to them to dress and act like other people as it is to put
a friend's cedar pencil in your pocket when you are done using
it. But I can never have any confidence in the tinsel kings of
the theatre after this. It will be a great loss. I used to take
such a thrilling pleasure in them. But, hereafter, I will turn
me sadly away and say ;
TIIEATKICAL MONARCHS EXPOSED.
399
" This does not answer — this isn't the style of king that /
am acquainted with."
When they swagger around the stage in jeweled crowns and
splendid
robes, I
shall feel
bound to
observe
that all the
Emperors
that ever /
was per
sonally ac
quainted
with wore
the com
monest sort
of clothes,
and did not
swagger.
And when
they come
on the stage
a 1 1 e n d ed
by a vast
body-guard
of stipes in
helmets
and tin breastplates, it will be my duty as well as my pleasure
to inform the ignorant that no crowned head of my acquaint
ance has a soldier any where about his house or his person.
Possibly it may be thought that our party tarried too long,
or did other improper things, but such was not the case. The
company felt that they were occupying an unusually respon
sible position — they were representing the people of America,
not the Government — and therefore they were careful to do
their best to perform their high mission with credit.
On the other hand, the Imperial families, no doubt, consid-
TINSEL KING.
400 SAVED AS BY FIRE.
ered that in entertaining us they were more especially enter
taining the people of America than they could by showering
attentions on a whole platoon of ministers plenipotentiary ;
and therefore they gave to the event its fullest significance, as
an expression of good will and friendly feeling toward the en
tire country. We took the kindnesses we received as atten
tions thus directed, of course, and not to ourselves as a party.
That we felt a personal pride in being received as the repre
sentatives of a nation, we do not deny; that we felt a national
pride in the warm cordiality of that reception, can not be
doubted.
Our poet has been rigidly suppressed, from the time we let
go the anchor. When it was announced that we were going
to visit the Emperor of Russia, the fountains of his great deep
were broken up, and he rained ineffable bosh for four-and-
twenty hours. Our original anxiety as to what we were going
to do with ourselves, was suddenly transformed into anxiety
about what we were going to do with our poet. The problem
was solved at last. Two alternatives were offered him — he
must either swear a dreadful oath that he would not issue a
line of his poetry while he was in the Czar's dominions, or else
remain under guard on board the ship until we were safe at
Constantinople again. He fought the dilemma long, but yielded
at last. It was a great deliverance. Perhaps the savage
reader would like a specimen of his style. I do not mean this
term to be offensive. I only use it because " the gentle reader"
has been used so often that any change from it can not but be
refreshing :
"Save iis and sanctify us, and finally, then,
See good provisions we enjoy while we journey to Jerusalem.
For so man proposes, which it is most true,
And time will wait for none, nor for us too."
The sea has been unusually rough all day. However, we
have had a lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a
run of visitors. The Governor-General came, and we received
him with a salute of nine guns. He brought his family with
him. I observed that carpets were spread from the pier-head
ARISTOCRATIC VISITORS. 401
to his carriage for him to walk on, though I have seen him
walk there without any carpet when he was not on business.
I thought may be he had what the accidental insurance people
might call an extra-hazardous polish ("policy" — joke, but not
above mediocrity,) on his boots, and wished to protect them,
but I examined and could not see that they were blacked any
better than usual. It may have been that he had forgotten his
carpet, before, but he did not have it with him, anyhow. He
was an exceedingly pleasant old gentleman ;' we all liked him,
especially Blucher. When he went away, Blucher invited him
to come again and fetch his carpet along.
Prince Dolgorouki and a Grand Admiral or two, whom we
had seen yesterday at the reception, came on board also. I
was a little distant with these parties, at first, because when I
have been visiting Emperors I do not like to be too familiar
with people I only know by reputation, and whose moral char
acters and standing in society I can not be thoroughly ac
quainted with. I judged it best to be a little offish, at first.
I said to myself, Princes and Counts and Grand Admirals are
very well, but they are not Emperors, and one can not be too
particular about who he associates with.
Baron Wrangel came, also. He used to be Russian Ambas
sador at Washington. I told him I had an uncle who fell
down a shaft and broke himself in two, as much as a year be
fore that. That was a falsehood, but then I was not going to
let any man eclipse me on surprising adventures, merely for
the want of a little invention. The Baron is a fine man, and
is said to stand high in the Emperor's confidence and esteem.
Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a boisterous, whole-souled old no
bleman, came with the rest. He is a man of progress and
enterprise — a representative man of the age. He is the Chief
Director of the railway system of Russia — a sort of railroad
king. In his line he is making things move along in this coun
try. He has traveled extensively in America. He says he has
tried convict labor on his railroads, and with perfect success.
He says the convicts work well, and are quiet and peaceable.
He observed that he employs nearly ten thousand of them now.
26
402 ARISTOCRATIC VISITORS.
This appeared to be another call on my resources. I wa£ equal
to the emergency. I said we had eighty thousand convicts
employed on the railways in America — all of them under sen
tence of death for murder in the first degree. That closed
him out.
We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebas-
topol, during the siege,) and many inferior army and also navy
officers, and a number of unofficial Russian ladies and gentle
men. Naturally; a champagne luncheon was in order, and
was accomplished without loss of life. Toasts and jokes were
discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thank
ing the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-
General, for our hospitable reception, and one by the Gov
ernor-General in reply, in which he returned the Emperor's
thanks for the speech, etc., etc.
CHAPTEE XXXYIII.
"YTT^E returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two
* * spent in exhausting marches about the city and voyages
up the Golden Horn in caiques, we steamed away again. We
passed through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, and
steered for a new land — a new one to us, at least — Asia. We
had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it,
through pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round
about.
We passed between Lemnos and Mytilene, and saw them as
we had seen Elba and the Balearic Isles — mere bulky shapes,
with the softening mists of distance upon them — whales in a
fog, as it wrere. Then we held our course southward, and
began to " read up " celebrated Smyrna.
At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle
amused themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit
to royalty. The opening paragraph of our Address to the
Emperor was framed as follows :
" We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling
simply for recreation — and unostentatiously, as becomes our
unofficial state — and, therefore, we have no excuse to
tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty, save
the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the
lord of a realm, which, through good and through evil
report, has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so
well."
The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and
404
SAILOR BURLESQUES.
wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and
coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a
belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched
himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray ; his tarred
and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Ad
mirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare
tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the
visiting " watch below," transformed into graceless ladies and
uncouth pilgrims, by
rude travesties upon
waterfalls, hoopskirts,
white kid gloves and
swallow-tail coats, mov
ed solemnly up the
companion way,
and
bowing low, began a
system of complicated
and extraordinary smil
ing which few monarchs
could look upon and
live. Then the mock
consul, a slush-plastered
deck-sweep, drew out a
soiled fragment of paper
and proceeded to read,
laboriously
" To His Imperial
Majesty, Alexander II.,
Emperor of Russia :
" We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling
simply for recreation, — and unostentatiously, as becomes our
unofficial state — and therefore, we have no excuse to tender for
presenting ourselves before your Majesty — "
Tlie Emperor — " Then what the devil did you come for ?"
— " Save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments
to the lord of a realm which — "
The Emperor — " Oh, d — n the Address ! — read it to the
SHIP EMPEROR.
SAILOR BURLESQUES.
405
police. Chamberlain, take these people over to my brother,
the Grand Duke's, and give them a square meal. Adieu ! I
am happy — I am gratified — I am delighted — I am bored.
Adieu, adieu — vamos the ranch ! The First Groom of the
Palace will proceed to count the portable articles of value
belonging to the premises."
The farce then closed, to be repeated again with every
THE RECEPTION.
change of the watches, and embellished with new and still more
extravagant inventions of pomp and conversation.
At all times of the day and night the phraseology of that
tiresome address fell upon our ears. Grimy sailors came down
out of the foretop placidly announcing themselves as " a hand
ful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation
and unostentatiously," etc. ; the coal passers moved to their
duties in the profound depths of the ship, explaining the
blackness of their faces and their uncouthness of dress, with
the reminder that they were " a handful of private citizens,
traveling simply for recreation," etc., and when the cry rang
through the vessel at midnight : " EIGHT BELLS ! — LARBOARD
WATCH, TURN OUT!" the larboard watch came gaping and
stretching out of their den, with the everlasting formula : " Aye-
406 SMYRNA.
aye, sir! "We are a handful of private citizens of America,
traveling simply for recreation, and unostentatiously, as be
comes our unofficial state !"
As I was a member of the committee, and helped to frame
the Address, these sarcasms came home to me. I never heard
a sailor proclaiming himself as a handful of American citizens
traveling for recreation, but I wished he might trip and fall
overboard, and so reduce his handful by one individual, at
least. I never was so tired of any one phrase as the sailors
made me of the opening sentence of the Address to the Em
peror of Russia.
This seaport of Smyrna, our first notable acquaintance in
Asia, is a closely packed city of one hundred and thirty thou
sand inhabitants, and, like Constantinople, it has no outskirts.
It is as closely packed at its outer edges as it is in the centre,
and then the habitations leave suddenly off and the plain be
yond seems houseless. It is just like any other Oriental city.
That is to say, its Moslem houses are heavy and dark, and as
comfortless as so many tombs ; its streets are crooked, rudely
and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase ;
the streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than the
one he wants to go to, and surprise him by landing him in the
most unexpected localities ; business is chiefly carried on in
great covered bazaars, celled like a honeycomb with innumer
able shops no larger than a common closet, and the whole hive
cut up into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommo
date a laden camel, and well calculated to confuse a stranger
and eventually lose him ; every where there is dirt, every where
there are fleas, every where there are lean, broken-hearted
dogs ; every alley is thronged with people ; wherever you look,
your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of extravagant cos
tumes ; the workshops are all open to the streets, and the
workmen visible ; all manner of sounds assail the ear, and over
them all rings out the muezzin's cry from some tall minaret,
calling the faithful vagabonds to prayer ; and superior to the
call to prayer, the noises in the streets, the interest of the cos
tumes — superior to every thing, and claiming the bulk of at-
MORE "ORIENTAL SPLENDOR." 407
tention first, last, and all the time — is a combination of Moham
medan stenches, to which the smell of even a Chinese quarter
would be as pleasant as the roasting odors of the fatted calf to
the nostrils of the returning Prodigal. Such is Oriental lux
ury — such is Oriental splendor ! We read about it all our
days, but we comprehend it not until we see it. Smyrna is a
very old city. Its name occurs several times in the Bible, one
or two of the discipl : * of Christ visited it, and here was located
one of the original seven apocalyptic churches spoken of in
Revelations. These churches were symbolized in the Scrip
tures as candlesticks, and on certain conditions there was a
sort of implied promise that Smyrna should be endowed
with a " crown of life." She was to "be faithful unto death"
— those were the terms. She has not kept up her faith
straight along, but the pilgrims that wrander hither con
sider that she has come near enough to it to save her, and so
they point to the fact that Smyrna to-day wrears her crown of
life, and is a great city, with a great commerce and full of en
ergy, while the cities wherein were located the other six
churches, and to which no crown of life was promised, have
vanished from the earth. So Smyrna really still possesses her
crown of life, in a business point of view. Her career, for
eighteen centuries, has been a chequered one, and she has been
under the rule of princes of many creeds, yet there has been
no season during all that time, as far as we know, (and during
such seasons as she was inhabited at all,) that she has been with
out her little community of Christians " faithful unto death."
Hers was the only church against which no threats were im
plied in the Revelations, and the only one which survived.
With Ephesus, forty miles from here, where was located an
other of the seven churches, the case was different. The " can-k
dlestick " has been removed from Ephesus. Her light has been
put out. Pilgrims, always prone to find prophecies in the
Bible, and often where none exist, speak cheerfully and compla
cently of poor, ruined Ephesus as the victim of prophecy.
And yet there is no sentence that promises, without due qualir
fication, the destruction of the city. The words are :
408 PILGRIM PROPHECY-SAVANS.
" Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first
works ; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out
of his place, except thou repent."
That is all ; the other verses are singularly complimentary to
Ephesus. The threat is qualified. There is no history to show
that she did not repent. But the cruelest habit the modern
prophecy-savans have, is that one of coolly and arbitrarily fit
ting the prophetic shirt on to the wro^g man. They do it
without regard to rhyme or reason. Both the cases I have
just mentioned are instances in point. Those " prophecies "
are distinctly leveled at the "churches of Ephesus, Smyrna,"
etc., and yet the pilgrims invariably make them refer to the
cities instead. Xo crown of life is promised to the town of
Smyrna and its commerce, but to the handful of Christians
who formed its " church." If they were "faithful unto death,"
they have their crown now — but no amount of faithfulness and
legal shrewdness combined could legitimately drag the city into
a participation in the promises of the prophecy. The stately
language of the Bible refers to a crown of life whose lustre
will reflect the day-beams of the endless ages of eternity, not
the butterfly existence of a city built by men's hands, which
must pass to dust with the builders and be forgotten even in
the mere handful of centuries vouchsafed to the solid world
itself between its cradle and its grave.
The fashion of delving out fulfillments of prophecy where
that prophecy consists of mere "ifs," trenches upon the absurd.
Suppose, a thousand years from now, a malarious swamp
builds itself up in the shallow harbor of Smyrna, or something
else kills the town ; and suppose, also, that within that time
the swamp that has filled the renowned harbor of ^Ephesus and
rendered her ancient site deadly and uninhabitable to-day, be
comes hard and healthy ground ; suppose the natural conse
quence ensues, to wit : that Smyrna becomes a melancholy
ruin, and Ephesus is rebuilt. What would the prophecy-savans
say \ They would coolly skip over our age of the world, and
say : " Smyrna was not faithful unto death, and so her crown
of life was denied her ; Ephesus repented, and lo ! her candle-
PILGRIM PROPIIECY-SAVANS. 409
stick was not removed. Behold these evidences ! How won
derful is prophecy !" i
Smyrna has been utterly destroyed six times. If her crown
of life had been an insurance policy, she would have had an
opportunity to collect on it the first time she fell. But she
holds it on sufferance and by a complimentary construction of
language which does not refer to her. Six different times,
however, I suppose some infatuated prophecy-enthusiast blun
dered along and said, to the infinite disgust of Smyrna and the
Smyrniotes : " In sooth, here is astounding fulfillment of
prophecy ! Smyrna hath not been faithful unto death, and be
hold her crown of life is vanished from her head. Verily,
these things be astonishing !"
Such things have a bad influence. They provoke worldly
men into using light conversation concerning sacred subjects.
Thick-headed commentators upon the Bible, and stupid
preachers and teachers, work more damage to religion than
sensible, cool-brained clergymen can fight away again, toil as
they may. It is not good judgment to fit a crown of life upon
a city which has been destroyed six times. That other class
of wiseacres who twist prophecy in such a manner as to make
it promise the destruction and desolation of the same city, use
judgment just as bad, since the city is in a very flourishing
condition now, unhappily for them. These things put argu
ments into the mouth of infidelity.
A portion of the city is pretty exclusively Turkish ; the
Jews have a quarter to themselves ; the Franks another quar
ter ; so, also, with the Armenians. The Armenians, of course,
are Christians. Their houses are large, clean, airy, hand
somely paved with black and white squares of marble, and in
the centre of many of them is a square court, which has in it
a luxuriant flower-garden and a sparkling fountain ; the doors
of all the rooms open on this. A very wide hall leads to the
street door, and in this the women sit, the most of the day. In
the cool of the evening they dress up in their best raiment and
show themselves at the door. They are all comely of counte
nance, and exceedingly neat and cleanly ; they look as if they
410 SOCIABLE ARMENIAN GIRLS.
were just out of a band-box. Some of the young ladies — many
of them, I may say — are even very beautiful ; they average a
shade better than American girls — which treasonable words I
pray may be forgiven me. They are very sociable, and will
smile back when a stranger smiles at them, bow back when he
bows, and talk back if he speaks to them. No introduction is
required. An hour's chat at the door with a pretty girl one
never saw before, is easily obtained, and is very pleasant. I
have tried it. I could not talk any thing but English, and the
girl knew nothing but Greek, or Armenian, or some such bar
barous tongue, but we got along very well. I find that in
cases like these, the fact that you can not comprehend each
other isn't much of a drawback. In that Russian town of
Yalta I danced an astonishing sort of dance an hour long, and
one I had not heard of before, with a very pretty girl, and we
talked incessantly, and laughed exhaustingly, and neither one
ever knew what the other was driving at. But it was splendid.
There were twenty people in the set, and the dance was very
lively and complicated. It was complicated enough without
me — with me it was more so. I threw in a figure now and
then that surprised those Russians. But I have never ceased
to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not
direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed
Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alpha
bet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce
it when I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams,
and get up with QIQ lockjaw in the morning. I am fading. I
do not take my meals now, with any sort of regularity. Her
dear name haunts me still in my dreams. It is awful on teeth.
It never comes out of my mouth but it fetches an old snag
along with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and nips off
a couple of the last syllables — but they taste good.
Coining through the Dardanelles, we saw camel trains on
shore with the glasses, but we were never close to one till we
got to Smyrna. These camels are very much larger than the
scrawny specimens one sees in the menagerie. They stride
along these streets, in single file, a dozen in a train, with
STREET SCENES.
411
heavy loads on their backs, and a fancy-looking negro in Turk
ish costume, or an Arab, preceding them on a little donkey
and completely overshadowed and rendered insignificant by
the huge beasts. To see a camel train laden with the spices
of Arabia
and the rare
fabrics of
Persia come
marching
through the
narrow al
leys of the
bazaar,
among por
ters with
their bur
dens, money
changers,
lamp- mer
chants, Al-
naschars in
the glass
ware busi
ness, portly
c ross-legged
Turks smok
ing the fa
mous nar-
ghili, and
the crowds drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes of the
East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks
nothing. It casts you back at once into your forgotten boy
hood, and again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian
Nights ; again your companions are princes, your lord is the
Caliph Haroun Al Haschid, and your servants are terrific
giants and genii that come with smoke and lightning and
thunder, and go as a storm goes when they depart !
STREET SCEXE IN SMYilXA.
CHAPTEE XXXIX.
~\TTE inquired, and learned that the lions of Smyrna con-
* V sisted of the ruins of the ancient citadel, whose broken
and prodigious battlements frown upon the city from a lofty
hill just in the edge of the town — the Mount Pagus of
Scripture, they call it ; the site of that one of the Seven
Apocalyptic Churches of Asia which was located here in
the first century of the Christian era ; and the grave and
the place of martyrdom of the venerable Polycarp, who
suffered in Smyrna for his religion some eighteen hundred
years ago.
We took little donkeys and started. We saw Polycarp's
tomb, and then hurried on.
The " Seven Churches " — thus they abbreviate it — came
next on the list. We rode there1 — about a mile and a half in
the sweltering sun — and visited a little Greek church which
they said was built upon the ancient site ; and we paid a small
fee, and the holy attendant gave each of us a little wax candle
as a remembrancer of the place, and I put mine in my hat
and the sun melted it and the grease all ran down the back of
my neck ; and so now I have not any thing left but the wick,
and it is a sorry and a wTilted-looking wrick at that.
Several of us argued as well as we could that the " church"
mentioned in the Bible meant a party of Christians, and not a
building ; that the Bible spoke of them as being very poor —
so poor, I thought, and so subject to persecution (as per Poly-
carp's martyrdom) that in the first place they probably could
THE
SEVEN CHURCHES/
413
not have afforded a church edifice, and in the second would
not have dared to build it in the open light of day if they
could ; and finally, that if they had had the privilege of build
ing it, common judgment would have suggested that they
build it somewhere near the town. But the elders of the
ship's family ruled us down and scouted our evidences. How
ever, retribution came to them afterward. They found that
they had been led astray and had gone to the wrong place ; they
discovered that the accepted site is in the city.
SMYRNA.
Riding through the town, we could see marks of the six
Smyrnas that have existed here and been burned up by fire or
knocked down by earthquakes. The hills and the rocks are
rent asunder in places, excavations expose great blocks of
building-stone that have lain buried for ages, and all the mean
houses and walls of modern Smyrna along the way are spotted
white with broken pillars, capitals and fragments of sculptured
marble that once adorned the lordly palaces that were the
glory of the city in the olden time.
414 MYSTERIOUS OYSTER MINE.
The ascent of the hill of the citadel is very steep, and we
proceeded rather slowly. But there were matters of interest
about us. In one place, five hundred feet above the sea, the
perpendicular bank on the upper side of the road was ten or
fifteen feet high, and the cut exposed three veins of oyster
shells, just as we have seen quartz veins exposed in the cutting
of a road in Nevada or Montana. The veins were about
eighteen inches thick and two or three feet apart, and they
slanted along downward for a distance of thirty feet or more, and
then disappeared where the cut joined the road. Heaven only
knows how far a man might trace them by " stripping." They
were clean, nice oyster shells, large, and just like any other
oyster shells. They were thickly massed together, and none
were scattered above or below the veins. Each one was a
well-defined lead by itself, and without a spur. My first in
stinct was to set up the usual —
NOTICE:
" "We, the undersigned, claim five claims of two hundred feet each, (and one for
discovery,) on this ledge or lode of oyster- shells, with all its dips, spurs, angles, va
riations and sinuosities, and fifty feet on each side of the same, to work it, etc., etc.,
according to the mining laws of Smyrna."
They were such perfectly natural-looking leads that I could
hardly keep from " taking them up." Among the oyster-shells
were mixed many fragments of ancient, broken crockery ware.
Now how did those masses of oyster-shells get there ? I can
not determine. Broken crockery and oyster-shells are suggest
ive of restaurants — but then they could have had no such
places away up there on that mountain side in our time, be
cause nobody has lived up there. A restaurant would not pay
in such a stony, forbidding, desolate place. And besides, there
were no champagne corks among the shells. If there ever was
a restaurant there, it must have been in Smyrna's palmy days,
when the hills were covered with palaces. I could believe in
one restaurant, on those terms ; but then how about the three ?
Did they have restaurants there at three different periods of
the world ? — because there are two or three feet of solid earth
MYSTERIOUS OYSTER MINE. 415
between the oyster leads. Evidently, the restaurant solution
will not answer.
The hill might have been the bottom of the sea, once, and
been lifted up, with its oyster-beds, by an earthquake — but,
then, how about the crockery ? And moreover, how about
three oyster beds, one above another, and thick strata of good
honest earth between ?
That theory will not do. It is just possible that this hill is
Mount Ararat, and that Noah's Ark rested here, and he ate
oysters and threw the shells overboard. But that will not do,
either. There are the three layers again and the solid earth
between — and, besides, there were only eight in Noah's family,
and they could not have eaten all these oysters in the two or
three months they staid on top of that mountain. The
beasts — however, it is simply absurd to suppose he did not
know any more than to feed the beasts on oyster suppers.
It is painful — it is even humiliating — but I am reduced
at last to one slender theory : that the oysters climbed up there
of their own accord. But what object could they have had in
view ? — what did they want up there ? What could any oys
ter want to climb a hill for ? To climb a hill must necessarily
be fatiguing and annoying exercise for an oyster. The most
natural conclusion would be that the oysters climbed up there
to look at the scenery. Yet when one comes to reflect upon
the nature of an oyster, it seems plain that he does not care
for scenery. An oyster has no taste for such things ; he cares
nothing for the beautiful. An oyster is of a retiring disposi
tion, and not lively — not even cheerful above the average, and
never enterprising. But above all, an oyster does not take any
interest in scenery — he scorns it. What have I arrived at
now ? Simply at the point I started from, namely, those oyster
shells are there, in regular layers, live hundred feet above the
sea, and no man knows how they got there. I have hunted
up the guide-books, and the gist of what they say is this :
" They are there, but how they got there is a mystery."
Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America
put on their ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their
416
A TEMPORARY TRIUMPH.
friends, and made ready to fly up into heaven at the first blast
of the trumpet, But the angel did not blow it. Miller's res
urrection day was a failure. The Millerites were disgusted.
I did not suspect that there were Millers in Asia Minor, but a
gentleman tells me that they had it all set for the world to
come to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago.
There was much buzzing and preparation for a long time pre
viously, and it culminated
in a wild excitement at the
appointed time. A vast
number of the populace as
cended the citadel hill early AX APPAREXT SUCCESS.
in the morning, to get out
of the way of the general destruction, and many of the infatu
ated closed up their shops and retired from all earthly busi
ness. But the strange part of it was that about three in the
afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends were at dinner
in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by thunder and
lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two or
three hours. It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that
time of the year, and scared some of the most skeptical. The
CURIOUS PLACE FOR A RAILROAD. 417
streets ran rivers and the hotel floor was flooded with water.
The dinner had to be suspended. When the storm finished
and left every body drenched through and through, and mel
ancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down from
the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons ! They had
been looking down upon the fearful storm going on below,
and really believed that their proposed destruction of the world
was proving a grand success.
A railway here in Asia — in the dreamy realm of the Ori
ent — in the fabled land of the Arabian Night* — is a strange
thing to think of. And yet they have one already, and are
building another. The present one is well built and well con
ducted, by an English Company, but is not doing an immense
amount of business. The first year it carried a good many
passengers, but its freight list only comprised eight hundred
pounds of figs !
It runs almost to the very gates of Ephesus — a town great in
all ages of the world — a city familiar to readers of the Bible,
and one which was as old as the very hills when the disciples
of Christ preached in its streets. It dates back to the shadowy
ages of tradition, and was the birthplace of gods renowned in
Grecian mythology. The idea of a locomotive tearing through
such a place as this, and waking the phantoms of its old days
of romance out of their dreams of dead and gone centuries, is
curious enough.
We journey thither to-inorrow to see the celebrated ruins.
27
OHAPTEE XL.
has been a stirring day. The Superintendent of the
railway put a train at our disposal, and did us the fur
ther kindness of accompanying us to Ephesus and giving to us
his watchful care. We brought sixty scarcely perceptible don
keys in the freight cars, for we had much ground to go over.
We have seen some of the most grotesque costumes, along the
line of the railroad, that can be imagined. I am glad that no
possible combination of words could describe them, for I might
then be foolish enough to attempt it.
At ancient Ayassalook, in the midst of a forbidding desert,
we came upon long lines of ruined aqueducts, and other rem
nants of architectural grandeur, that told us plainly enough
we were nearing what had been a metropolis, once. We left
the train and mounted the donkeys, along with our invited
guests — pleasant young gentlemen from the officers' list of an
American man-of-war.
The little donkeys had saddles upon them which were made
very high in order that the rider's feet might not drag the
ground. The preventative did not work well in the cases of
our tallest pilgrims, however. There wrere no bridles — noth
ing but a single rope, tied to the bit. It was purely orna
mental, for the donkey cared nothing for it. If he were drift
ing to starboard, you might put your helm down hard the
other way, if it were any satisfaction to you to do it, but he
would continue to drift to starboard all the same. There was
only one process which could be depended on, and that was to
THE VILLAINOUS DONKEYS.
419
get down and lift his rear around until his head pointed in the
right direction, or take him under your arm and carry him to
a part of the road which he could not get out of without
climbing. The sun flamed down as hot as a furnace, and neck-
scarfs, veils and umbrellas seemed hardly any protection ;
they served only to make the long procession look more than
ever fantastic — for be it known the ladies were all riding
astride because they could not stay on the shapeless saddles
DRIFTING TO STARBOARD.
sidewise, the men were perspiring ,and out of temper, their
feet were banging against the rocks, the donkeys were caper
ing in every direction but the right one and being belabored
with clubs for it, and every now and then a broad umbrella
would suddenly go down out of the cavalcade, announcing to
all that one more pilgrim had bitten the dust. It was a wilder
picture than those solitudes had seen for many a day. No
donkeys ever existed that were as hard to navigate as these, I
think, or that had so many vile, exasperating instincts. Occa-
420
BYGONE MAGNIFICENCE.
sionally we grew so tired and breathless with fighting them
that we had to desist, — and immediately the donkey would
come down to a de
liberate walk. This,
with the fatigue, and
O
the sun, would put a
man asleep ; and as
soon as the man was
asleep, the donkey
would lie down. My
donkey shall never
see his boyhood's
home again. lie has
lain down once too
often. He must die.
A SPOILED NAP.
"We all stood in the
vast theatre of ancient Ephesus, — the stone-benched amphi
theatre I mean — and had our picture taken. We looked as
proper there as we would look any where, I suppose. We do
not embellish the general desolation of a desert much. We
add what dignity we can to a stately ruin with our green um
brellas and jackasses, but it is little. However, we mean
well.
I wish to say a brief word of the aspect of Ephesus.
On a high, steep hill, toward the sea, is a gray ruin of pon
derous blocks of marble, wherein, tradition says, St. Paul was
imprisoned eighteen centuries ago. From these old walls you
have the finest view of the desolate scene where once stood
Ephesus, the proudest city of ancient times, and whose Temple
of Diana was so noble in design, and so exquisite of workman
ship, that it ranked high in the list of the Seven Wonders of
the World.
Behind you is the sea ; in front is a level green valley, (a
marsh, in fact,) extending far away among the mountains ; to
the right of the front view is the old citadel of Ayassalook, on
a high hill ; the ruined Mosque of the Sultan Selim stands
near it in the plain, (this is built over the grave of St. John,
BYGONE MAGNIFICENCE. 421
and was formerly a Christian Church ;) farther toward you is
the hill of Pion, around whose front is clustered all that re
mains of the ruins of Ephesus that still stand ; divided from it
by a narrow valley is the long, rocky, rugged mountain of Co-
ressus. The scene is a pretty one, and yet desolate — for in
that wide plain no man can live, and in it is no human habit
ation. But for the crumbling arches and monstrous piers and
broken walls that rise from the foot of the hill of Pion, one
could not believe that in this place once stood a city whose re
nown is older than tradition itself. It is incredible to reflect
that things as familiar all over the world to-day as household
words, belong in the history and in the shadowy legends of
this silent, mournful solitude. "We speak of Apollo and of
Diana — they were born here ; of the metamorphosis of Syrinx
into a reed — it was done here ; of the great god Pan — he
dwelt in the caves of this hill of Coressus ; of the Amazons —
this was their best prized home ; of Bacchus and Hercules —
both fought the warlike women here ; of the Cyclops — they
laid the ponderous marble blocks of some of the ruins yonder;
of Homer — this was one of his many birthplaces ; of Cimon
of Athens ; of Alcibiades, Lysander, Agesilaus — they visited
here ; so did Alexander the Great ; so did Hannibal and An-
tiochus, Scipio, Lucullus and Sylla ; Brutus, Cassius, Pompey,,
Cicero, and Augustus ; Antony was a judge in this place, and
left his seat in the open court, while the advocates were speak
ing, to run after Cleopatra, who passed the door ; from this city
these two sailed on pleasure excursions, in galleys with silver
oars and perfumed sails, and with companies of beautiful girls
to serve them, and actors and musicians to amuse them ; in
days that seem almost modern, so remote are they from the
early history of this city, Paul the Apostle preached the new
religion here, and so did John, and here it is supposed the for
mer was pitted against wild beasts, for in 1 Corinthians, xv.. 32.
he says :
" If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus," &c.,
when many men still lived who had seen the Christ ; here
422
FRAGMENTS OF HISTORY.
Mary Magdalen died, and here the Virgin Mary ended her
days with John, albeit Rome has since judged it best to locate
her grave elsewhere ; six or seven hundred years ago — almost
yesterday, as it were — troops of mail-clad Crusaders thronged
the streets ; and to come down to trifles, we speak of meander
ing streams, and find a new interest in a common word when
we discover that the crooked river Meander, in yonder valley,
gave it to our dictionary. It makes me feel as old as these
dreary hills to
- look down
upon these
moss-hung ru
ins, this his
toric desola
tion. One
may read the
Scriptures
and believe,
but he can not
go and stand
yonder in the
ruined theatre
and in imag
ination people
it again with
the vanished
multitudes
who mobbed
Paul's com
rades there and shouted, with one voice, " Great is Diana of
the Ephesians !" The idea of a shout in such a solitude as this
almost makes one shudder.
It was a wonderful city, this Ephesus. Go where you will
about these broad plains, you find the most exquisitely sculp
tured marble fragments scattered thick among the dust and
weeds ; and protruding from the ground, or lying prone upon
it, are beautiful fluted columns of porphyry and all precious
ANCIENT AMPHITHEATRE AT EPHESUS.
A RELIC.
423
marbles ; and at every step you find elegantly carved capitals
and massive bases, and polished tablets engraved with Greek
inscriptions. It is a world of precious relics, a wilderness of
marred and mutilated gems. And yet what are these things
to the wonders that lie buried here under the ground ? At
Constantinople, at Pisa, in the cities of Spain, are great
mosques and cathedrals, whose grandest columns came from
the temples and palaces of Ephesus, and yet one has only to
scratch the ground here to match them. "We shall never know
what magnificence is, until this imperial city is laid bare to
the sun.
The finest piece of sculpture we have yet seen and the one
that impressed
us most, (for
we do not know
much about art
and can not ea
sily work up
ourselves into
ecstacies over
it,) is one that
lies in this old
theatre of Eph
esus which St.
Paul's riot has
made so cele
brated. It is
only the head
less body of a
man, clad in a
coat of mail,
with a Medusa
head upon the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded that such
dignity arid such majesty were never thrown into a form of
stone before.
What builders they were, these men of antiquity ! The
massive arches of some of these ruins rest upon piers that are
MODERN AMPHITHEATRE AT EPHESUS.
424
MASSIVE MASONRY
fifteen feet square and built entirely of solid blocks of marble,
some of which are as large as a Saratoga trunk, and some the
size of a boarding-house sofa. They are not shells or shafts of
stone tilled inside with rubbish, but the whole pier is a mass
of solid masonry. Vast arches, that may have been the gates
of the city, are built in the same way. They have braved the
storms and sieges of three thousand years, and have been sha
ken by many an earthquake, but still they stand. "When they
KU1XS OF EPHESUS.
dig alongside of them, they find ranges of ponderous masonry
that are as perfect in every detail as they were the day those
old Cyclopian giants finished them. An English Company is
going to excavate Ephesus — and then !
And now am I reminded of—
THE LEGEND.
425
THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
In the Mount of Pion, yonder, is the Cave of the Seven
Sleepers. Once upon a time, about fifteen hundred years ago,
seven young men lived near each other in Ephesus, who be
longed to the despised sect of the Christians. It came to pass
that the good King Maximilianus, (I am telling this story for
nice little boys and girls,) it came to pass, I say, that the good
King Maximilianus fell to persecuting the Christians, and as
time rolled on he made it very warm for them. So the seven
young men said one to the other, let us get up and travel.
And they got up and traveled. They tarried not to bid their
fathers and mothers good-bye, or any friend they knew. They
only took certain moneys which their parents had, and gar-
THE JOURNEY.
ments that belonged unto their friends, whereby they might
remember them when far away ; and they took also the dog
Ketmehr, which was the property of their neighbor Malchus,
because the beast did run his head into a noose which one of
the young men was carrying carelessly, and they had not time
to release him ; and they took also certain chickens that
426 THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
seemed lonely in the neighboring coops, and likewise some
bottles of curious liquors that stood near the grocer's window ;
and then they departed from the city. By-and-by they came
to a marvelous cave in the Hill of Pion and entered into it
and feasted, and presently they hurried on again. But they
forgot the bottles of curious liquors, and left them behind.
They traveled in many lands, and had many strange adven
tures. They were virtuous young men, and lost no opportu
nity that fell in their way to make their livelihood. Their
motto was in these words, namely, " Procrastination is the thief
of time." And so, whenever they did come upon a man who
was alone, they said, Behold, this person hath the where
withal — let us go through him. And they went through
him. At the end of five years they had waxed tired of travel
and adventure, and longed to revisit their old home again and
hear the voices and see the faces that were dear unto their
youth. Therefore they went through such parties as fell in
their way where they sojourned at that time, and journeyed
back toward Ephesus again. For the good King Maximilianus
was become converted unto the new faith, and the Christians
rejoiced because they were no longer persecuted. One day as
the sun went down, they came to the cave in the Mount of
Pion, and they said, each to his fellow, Let us sleep here, and
go and feast and make merry with our friends when the morn
ing cometh. And each of the seven lifted up his voice and
said, It is a whiz. So they went in, and lo, where they had put
them, there lay the bottles of strange liquors, and they judged
that age had not impaired their excellence. Wherein the wan
derers were right, and the heads of the same were level. So
each of the young men drank six bottles, and behold they felt
very tired, then, and lay down and slept soundly.
"When they awoke, one of them, Johannes — surnamed Smith-
ianus — said, We are naked. And it was so. Their raiment
was all gone, and the money which they had gotten from a
stranger whom they had proceeded through as they approached
the city, was lying upon the ground, corroded arid rusted and
defaced. Likewise the dog Ketmehr was gone, and nothing
save the brass that was upon his collar remained. They won-
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 427
dered much at these things. But they took the money, and
they wrapped about their bodies some leaves, and came up to
the top of the hill. Then were they perplexed. The wonder
ful temple of Diana was gone ; many grand edifices they had
never seen before stood in the city ; men in strange garbs
moved about the streets, and every thing was changed.
Johannes said, It hardly seems like Ephesus. Yet here is
the great gymnasium ; here is the mighty theatre, wherein I
have seen seventy thousand men assembled ; here is the Agora ;
there is the font where the sainted John the Baptist immersed
the converts ; yonder is the prison of the good St. Paul, where
we all did use to go to touch the ancient chains that bound
him and be cured of our distempers ; I see the tomb of the dis
ciple Luke, and afar off is the church wherein repose the ashes
of the holy John, where the Christians of Ephesus go twice a
year to gather the dust from the tomb, which is able to make
bodies whole again that are corrupted by disease, and cleanse
the soul from sin ; but see how the wharves encroach upon the
sea, and what multitudes of ships are anchored in the bay ;
see, also, how the city hath stretched abroad, far over the val
ley behind Pion, and even unto the wralls of Ayassalook ; and
lo, all the hills are white with palaces and ribbed with colon
nades of marble. How mighty is Ephesus become !
And wondering at what their eyes had seen, they went down
into the city and purchased garments and clothed themselves.
And when they would have passed on, the merchant bit the
coins which they had given him, with his teeth, and turned
them about and looked curiously upon them, and cast them
upon his counter, and listened if they rang ; and then he said,
These be bogus. And they said, Depart thou to Hades, and
went their way. When they were come to their houses, they
recognized them, albeit they seemed old and mean ; and they
rejoiced, and were glad. They ran to the doors, and knocked,
and strangers opened, and looked inquiringly upon them. And
they said, with great excitement, while their hearts beat high,
and the color in their faces came and went, Where is my
father? Where is my mother? Where are Dionysius and
4:28 THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
Serapion, and Pericles, and Deems ? And the strangers that
opened said, We know not these. The Seven said, How, you
know them not ? How long have ye dwelt here, and whither
are they gone that dwelt here before ye ? And the strangers
said, Ye play upon us with a jest, young men ; we and our
fathers have sojourned under these roofs these six generations ;
the names ye utter rot upon the tombs, and they that bore
them have run their brief race, have laughed and sung, have
borne the sorrows and the weariness that were allotted them,
and are at rest ; for nine-score years the summers have come
and gone, and the autumn leaves have fallen, since the roses
faded out of their cheeks and they laid them to sleep with the
dead.
Then the seven young men turned them away from their
homes, and the strangers shut the doors upon them. The
wanderers marveled greatly, and looked into the faces of all
they met, as hoping to find one that they knew ; but all were
strange, and passed them by and spake no friendly word.
They were sore distressed and sad. Presently they spake unto
a citizen and said, Who is King in Ephesus ? And the citizen
answered and said, Whence come ye that ye know not that
great Laertius reigns in Ephesus ? They looked one at the
other, greatly perplexed, and presently asked again, Where,
then, is the good King Maximilianus ? The citizen moved him
apart, as one who is afraid, and said, Yerily these men be mad,
and dream dreams, else would they know that the King
whereof they speak is dead above two hundred years agone.
Then the scales fell from the eyes of the Seven, an done said,
Alas, that we drank of the curious liquors. They have made
us weary, and in dreamless sleep these two long centuries have
we lain. Our homes are desolate, our friends are dead. Be
hold, the jig is up — let TIS die. And that same day went they
forth and laid them down and died. And in that self-same
day, likewise, the Seven-up did cease in Ephesus, for that the
Seven that were up were down again, and departed and dead
withal. And the names that be upon their tombs, even unto
this time, are Johannes Smithianus, Trumps, Gift, High, and
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
429
Low, Jack, and The Game. And with the sleepers lie also the
bottles wherein were once the curious liquors ; and upon them
is writ, in
ancient let
ters, such
words as
t h e s e —
names of
heathen
gods of old
en time,
perchance :
Rumpunch,
Jinsling,
Egnog.
Such is
the story
of the Seven Sleepers, (with slight variations,) and I know it is
true, because I have seen the cave myself.
Really, so firm a faith had the ancients in this legend, that
as late as eight or nine hundred years ago, learned travelers
held it in superstitious fear. Two of them record that they
ventured into it, but ran quickly out again, not daring to tarry
lest they should fall asleep and outlive their great grand-chil
dren a century or so. Even at this day the ignorant denizens
of the neighboring country prefer not to sleep in it.
GRAVES OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
CHAPTEE XLI.
"TTTUEIST I last made a memorandum, we were at Ephesus.
* * We are in Syria, now, encamped in the mountains of
Lebanon. The interregnum has been long, both as to time
and distance. We brought not a relic from Ephesus ! After
gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking or
naments from the interior work of the Mosques ; and after
bringing them at a cost of infinite trouble and fatigue, five
miles on muleback to the railway depot, a government officer
compelled all who had such things to disgorge ! He had an
order from Constantinople to look out for our party, and see that
we carried nothing off. It was a wise, a just, and a well-de
served rebuke, but it created a sensation. I never resist a
temptation to plunder a stranger's premises without feeling in
sufferably vain about it. This time I felt proud beyond ex
pression. I was serene in the midst of the scoldings that were
heaped upon the Ottoman government for its affront offered to
a pleasuring party of entirely respectable gentlemen and ladies.
I said, " We that have free souls, it touches us not." The shoe
not only pinched our party, but it pinched hard ; a principal
sufferer discovered that the imperial order was inclosed in an
envelop bearing the seal of the British Embassy at Constanti
nople, and therefore must have been inspired by the represent
ative of the Queen. This was bad — very bad. Coming solely
from the Ottomans, it might have signified only Ottoman hatred
of Christians, and a vulgar ignorance as to genteel methods
of expressing it ; but coming from the Christianized, educated,
politic British legation, it simply intimated that we were a sort
APPROACHING HOLY LAND. 431
of gentlemen and ladies who would bear watching ! So the
party regarded it, and were incensed accordingly. The truth
doubtless was, that the same precautions would have been ta
ken against any travelers, because the English Company who
have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and have paid a
great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve to
be. They can not afford to run the risk of having their hos
pitality abused by travelers, especially since travelers are such
notorious scorners of honest behavior.
We sailed from Smyrna, in the wildest spirit of expectancy,
for the chief feature, the grand goal of the expedition, was
near at hand — we were approaching the Holy Land ! Such a
burrowing into the hold for trunks that had lain buried for
weeks, yes for months ; such a hurrying to and fro above decks
and below ; such a riotous system of packing and unpacking ;
such a littering up of the cabins with shirts and skirts, and in
describable and unclassable odds and ends ; such a making up
of bundles, and setting apart of umbrellas, green spectacles
and thick veils ; such a critical inspection of saddles and bri
dles that had never yet touched horses ; such a cleaning and
loading of revolvers and examining of bowie-knives ; such a
half-soling of the seats of pantaloons with serviceable buck
skin ; then such a poring over ancient maps ; such a reading
up of Bibles and Palestine travels ; such a marking out of
routes ; such exasperating efforts to divide up the company
into little bands of congenial spirits who might make the long
and arduous journey without quarreling ; and morning, noon
and night, such mass-meetings in the cabins, such speech-mak
ing, such sage suggesting, such worrying and quarreling, and
such a general raising of the very mischief, was never seen in
the ship before !
But it is all over now. We are cut up into parties of six or
eight, and by this time are scattered far and wide. Ours is
the only one, however, that is venturing on what is called " the
long trip " — that is, out into Syria, by Baalbec to Damascus,
and thence down through the full length of Palestine. It
would be a tedious, and also a too risky journey, at this hot
432 THE "LONG" ROUTE ADOPTED.
season of the year, for any but strong, healthy men, accus
tomed somewhat to fatigue and rough life in the open air.
The other parties will take shorter journeys.
For the last two months we have been in a worry about one
portion of this Holy Land pilgrimage. I refer to transporta
tion service. We knew very well that Palestine was a coun
try which did not do a large passenger business, and every
man we came across who knew any thing about it gave us to
understand that not half of our party would be able to get
dragomen and animals. At Constantinople every body fell to
telegraphing the American Consuls at Alexandria and Beirout
to give notice that we wanted dragomen and transportation.
We were desperate — would take horses, jackasses, cameleop-
ards, kangaroos — any thing. At Smyrna, more telegraphing
was done, to the same end. Also, fearing for the worst, we
telegraphed for a large number of seats in the diligence for
Damascus, and horses for the ruins of Baalbec.
As might have been expected, a notion got abroad in Syria
and Egypt that the whole population of the Province of
America (the Turks consider us a trifling little province in
some unvisited corner of the world,) were coming to the Holy
Land — and so, when we got to Beirout yesterday, we found
the place full of dragomen and their outfits. We had all in
tended to go by diligence to Damascus, and switch oft' to Baal
bec as we went along — because we expected to rejoin the ship,
go to Mount Carmel, and take to the woods from there. How
ever, when our own private party of eight found that it was
possible, and proper enough, to make the "long trip," we
adopted that programme. We have never been much trouble
to a Consul before, but we have been a fearful nuisance to our
Consul at Beirout. I mention this because I can not help ad
miring his patience, his industry, and his accommodating
spirit. I mention it also, because I think some of our ship's
company did not give him as full credit for his excellent ser
vices as he deserved.
Well, out of our eight, three were selected to attend to all
business connected with the expedition. The rest of us had
PROSPECTING BEYROUT. 433
nothing to do but look at the beautiful city of Beirout, with its
bright, new houses nestled among a wilderness of green shrub
bery spread abroad over an upland that sloped gently down to
the sea ; and also at the mountains of Lebanon that environ
it ; and likewise to bathe in the transparent blue water that
rolled its billows about the ship (we did not know there were
sharks there.) We had also to range up and down through
the town and look at the costumes. These are picturesque
and fanciful, but not so varied as at Constantinople and Smyr
na ; the women of Beirout add an agony — in the two former
cities the sex wear a thin veil which one can see through (and
they often expose their ancles,) but at Beirout they cover their
entire faces with dark-colored or black veils, so that they look
like mummies, and then expose their breasts to the public. A
young gentleman (I believe he was a Greek,) volunteered to
show us around the city, and said it would afford him great
pleasure, because he was studying English and wanted practice
in that language. When we had finished the rounds, how
ever, he called for remuneration — said he hoped the gentlemen
would give him a trifle in the way of a few piastres (equivalent
to a few five cent pieces.) We did so. The Consul was sur
prised when he heard it, and said he knew the young fellow's
family very well, and that they were an old and highly respect
able family and worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars !
Some people, so situated, would have been ashamed of the
berth he had with us and his manner of crawling into it.
At the appointed time our business committee reported, and
said all things were in readiness — that we were to start to-day,
with horses, pack animals, and tents, and go to Baalbec, Da
mascus, the Sea of Tiberias, and thence southward by the way
of the scene of Jacob's Dream and other notable Bible local
ities to Jerusalem — from thence probably to the Dead Sea, but
possibly not — and then strike for the ocean and rejoin the ship
three or four weeks hence at Joppa ; terms, five dollars a day
apiece, in gold, and every thing to be furnished by the drago
man. They said we would live as well as at a hotel. I had
read something like that before, and did not shame my judg-
28
434
THE HORSE HOSPITAL.
ment by believing a word of it. I said nothing, however,
but packed up a blanket and a shawl to sleep in, pipes and
tobacco, two or three woollen shirts, a portfolio, a guide-book,
and a Bible. I also took along a towel and a cake of soap, to
inspire respect in the Arabs, who would take me for a king in
disguise.
We were to select our horses at 3 p. M. At that hour Abra
ham, the
dragoman,
m arshaled
them before
us. With
all solemni
ty I set it
down here,
that those
horses were
the hardest
lot I ever
did come
across, and
their accou
tre m e n t s
were in ex
quisite keep
ing with
their style.
One brute had an eye out ; another had his tail sawed off close,
like a rabbit, and was proud of it ; another had a bony ridge
running from his neck to his tail, like one of those ruined
aqueducts one sees about Rome, and had a neck on him like
a bowsprit ; they all limped, and had sore backs, and likewise
raw places and old scales scattered about their persons like
brass nails in a hair trunk ; their gaits were marvelous to
contemplate, and replete with variety — under way the proces
sion looked like a fleet in a storm. It was fearful. Blucher
shook his head and said :
THE SELECTION.
SUMPTUOUS VAGABONDIZING. 435
" That dragon is going to get himself into trouble fetching
these old crates out of the hospital the way they are, unless he
has got a permit."
I said nothing. The display was exactly according to the
guide-book, and were we not traveling by the guide-book ? I
selected a certain horse because I thought I saw him shy, and
I thought that a horse that had spirit enough to shy was not
to be despised.
At 6 o'clock P. M., we came to a halt here on the breezy
summit of a shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the
handsome valley where dwelt some of those enterprising Phoe
nicians of ancient times we read so much about ; all around
us are what were once the dominions of Hiram, King of Tyre,
who furnished timber from the cedars of these Labanon hills
to build portions of King Solomon's Temple with.
Shortly after six, our pack train arrived. I had not seen it
before, and a good right I had to be astonished. We had nine
teen serving men and twenty-six pack mules ! It was a perfect
caravan. It looked like one, too, as it wound among the rocks.
I wondered what in the very mischief we wanted with such a
vast turn-out as that, for eight men. I wondered awhile, but
soon I began to long for a tin plate, and some bacon and beans.
I had camped out many and many a time before, and knew
just what was coming. I w^ent off, without waiting for serv
ing men, and unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions
of his ribs and his spine as projected through his hide, and
when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up —
tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and
crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was
speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and
set them up in the tents ; they put a soft mattress and pillows
and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed.
Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it pla
ced pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels —
one set for each man ; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and
said we could put our small trifles in them for convenience,
and if \ve needed pins or such things, they were sticking every
436 SUMPTUOUS VAGABONDIZING.
where. Then came the finishing touch — they spread carpets
on the floor ! I simply said, " If you call this camping out,
all right — but it isn't the style / am used to ; my little bag
gage that I brought along is at a discount."
It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables — candles
set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell — a
CAMPING OUT.
genuine, simon-pure bell — rang, and we were invited to " the
saloon." I had thought before that we had a tent or so too
many, but now here was one, at least, provided for ; it was to
be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the others, it
was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was
very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a
gem of a place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs ; a
table-cloth and napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness
laughed to scorn the things we were used to in the great ex
cursion steamer ; knives and forks, soup-plates, dinner-plates
— every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was won
derful ! And they call this camping out. Those stately fel
lows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner
which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose,
UNNECESSARY APOLOGY. 437
potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes;
the viands were better cooked than any we had eaten for
weeks, and the table made a finer appearance, with its large
German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any table we
had sat down to for a good while, and yet that polite drago
man, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole
affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting
under way for a very long trip, and promising to do a great
deal better in future !
It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morn
ing.
They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious
privilege to be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.
CHAPTEE XLII.
~TT7~E are camped near Temnin-el-Foka — a name which the
V V boys have simplified a good deal, for the sake of con
venience in spelling. They call it Jacksonville. It sounds a
little strangely, here in the Valley of Lebanon, but. it has the
merit of being easier to remember than the Arabic name.
"COME LIKE SPIRITS, SO DEPART."
"The night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
I slept very soundly last night, yet when the dragoman's
bell rang at half-past five this morning and the cry went abroad
of " Ten minutes to dress for breakfast !" I heard both. It-
surprised me, because I have not heard the breakfast gong in
the ship for a month, and whenever we have had occasion to
fire a salute at daylight, I have only found it out in the course
of conversation afterward. However, camping out, even
though it be in a gorgeous tent, makes one fresh and lively in
the morning — especially if the air you are breathing is the
cool, fresh air of the mountains.
I was dressed within the ten minutes, and came out, The
saloon tent had been stripped of its sides, and had nothing left
but its roof; so when we sat down to table we could look out
over a noble panorama of mountain, sea and hazy valley. And
sitting thus, the sun rose slowly up and suffused the picture
with a world of rich coloring.
THE HORSE "JERICHO." 43',)
Hot mutton chopst fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes
and coffee — all excellent. This was the bill of fare. It was
sauced with a savage appetite purchased by hard riding the
day before, and refreshing sleep in a pure atmosphere. As I
called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced over my shoulder,
and behold our white village was gone — the splendid tents had
vanished like magic ! It was wonderful how quickly those
Arabs had "folded their tents;" and it was wonderful, also,
how quickly they had gathered the thousand odds and ends of
the camp together and disappeared with them.
By half-past six we were under way, and all the Syrian
world seemed to be under way also. The road was filled with
mule trains and long processions of camels. This reminds me
that vse have been trying for some time to think what a camel
looks like, and now we have made it out. When he is down
on all his knees, flat on his breast to receive his load, he looks
something like a goose swimming ; and when he is upright he
looks like an ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not
beautiful, and their long under lip gives them an exceedingly
"gallus"* expression. They have immense, flat, forked cush
ions of feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie
with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular about
their diet. They would eat a tombstone if they could
bite it. A thistle grows about here which has needles on it
that would pierce through leather,
I think ; if one touches you, you
can find relief in nothing but pro
fanity. The, camels eat these.
They show by their actions that
they enjoy them. I suppose it
would be a real treat to a camel
to have a keg of nails for supper.
While I am speaking of ani- A GOOD
mals, I will mention that I have
a horse now by the name of " Jericho." He is a mare. I have
seen remarkable horses before, but none so remarkable as this.
I wanted a horse that could shy, and this one fills the bill. I
* Excuse the slang — no other word will describe it.
•±40
THE HORSE UJ ERICH O.
had an idea that shying indicated spirit. If I was correct, I
have got the most spirited horse on earth. He shies at every
thing he comes across, with the utmost impartiality. He ap
pears to have a mortal dread of telegraph poles, especially ;
and it is fortunate that these are on both sides of the road,
because as it is now, I never fall off twice in succession on the
same side. If I fell on the same side always, it would get to
be monotonous after a while. This creature has scared at
every thing he has seen to-day, except a haystack. He walked
up to that with an intrepidity and a recklessness that were
astonishing. And it would fill any one with admiration to see
how he preserves his self-possession in the presence of a barley
sack. This dare-devil bravery will be the death of this horse
some day.
He is not particularly fast, but I think he will get me through
the Holy Land. He has only one fault. His tail has been
chopped off or else he has sat down on it too hard, some time
or other, and he has to
fight the flies with his
heels. This is all very
well, but when he tries to
kick a fly off the top of
his head with his hind
foot, it is too much varie
ty. He is going to get
himself into trouble that
way some day. He reach
es around and bites my
legs too. I do not care
particularly about that,
only I do not like to see a
horse too sociable.
I think the owner of this
prize had a wrong opinion
about him. He had an
idea that he was one of
INTERESTING FETE.
those fiery, untamed
steeds, but he is not of that character. I know the Arab had
ON HISTORICAL GROUND. 441
this idea, because when he brought the horse out for inspection
in Beirout, he kept jerking at the bridle and shouting in Ara
bic, " Ho ! will you ? Do you want to run away, you ferocious
beast, and break your neck ?" when all the time the horse was
not doing any thing in the world, and only looked like he
wanted to lean up against something and think. Whenever
he is not shying at things, or reaching after a fly, he wants to
•r O v '
do that yet. How it would surprise his owner to know this.
We have been in a historical section of country all day. At
noon we camped three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh,
near the junction of the Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el
Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the immense, level, garden-
like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping near the
same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We
can see the long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon pro
jecting above the eastern hills. The " dews of Hermon " are
falling upon us now, and the tents are almost soaked with
them.
Over the way from us, and higher up the valley, we can dis
cern, through the glasses, the faint outlines of the wonderful
ruins of Baalbec, the supposed Baal-Gad of Scripture. Joshua,
and another person, were the two spies who were sent into
this land of Canaan by the children of Israel to report upon
its character — I mean they were the spies who reported favor
ably. They took back with them some specimens of the grapes
of this country, and in the children's picture-books they are
always represented as bearing one monstrous bunch swung to
a pole between them, a respectable load for a pack-train. The
Sunday-school books exaggerated it a little. The grapes are
most excellent to this day, but the bunches are not as large as
those in the pictures. I was surprised and hurt when I saw
them, because those colossal bunches of grapes were one of my
most cherished juvenile traditions.
Joshua reported favorably, and the children of Israel jour
neyed on, with Moses at the head of the general government,
and Joshua in command of the army of six hundred thousand
fighting men. Of women and children and civilians there was
442
THE ANCIENT RAID.
a countless swarm. Of all that mighty host, none but the two
faithful spies ever lived to set their feet in the Promised Land.
They and their descendants wandered forty years in the desert,
SUNDAY-SCHOOL GRAPES.
and then Moses, the gifted warrior, poet, statesman and phi
losopher, went up into Pisgah and met his mysterious fate.
Where he was buried no man knows — for
« » * * no man dug that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er —
For the Sons of God upturned the sod
And laid the dead man there 1"
Then Joshua began his terrible raid, and from Jericho clear
to this Baal-Gad, he swept the land like the Genius of Destruc
tion. He slaughtered the people, laid waste their soil, and
razed their cities to the ground. He wasted thirty-one kings
also. One may call it that, though really it can hardly be
called wasting them, because there were always plenty of kings
in those days, and to spare. At any rate, he destroyed thirty-
one kings, and divided up their realms among his Israelites.*
He divided up this valley stretched out here before us, and so
it was once Jewish territory. The Jews have long since dis
appeared from it, however.
NOAH'S TOMB. 443
Back yonder, an hour's journey from here, we passed through
an Arab village of stone dry-goods boxes (they look like that,)
where Noah's tomb lies under lock and key. [Noah built the
ark.] Over these old hills and valleys the ark that contained
all that was left of a vanished world once floated.
I make no apology for detailing the above information. It
will be news to some of my readers, at any rate.
Noah's tomb is built of stone, and is covered with a long
stone building. Bucksheesh let us in. The building h^id to
be long, because the grave of the honored old navigator is two
hundred and ten feet long itself! It is only about four feet
high, though. He must have cast a shadow like a lightning-
rod. The proof that this is the genuine spot where Noah was
buried can only be doubted by uncommonly incredulous peo
ple. The evidence is pretty straight. Shem, the son of Noah,
was present at the burial, and showed the place to his de
scendants, who transmitted the knowledge to their descendants,
and the lineal descendants of these introduced themselves to
us to-day. It was pleasant to make the acquaintance of mem
bers of so respectable a family. It was a thing to be proud of.
It was the next thing to being acquainted with Noah himself.
Noah's memorable voyage will always possess a living in
terest for me, henceforward.
If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fet
tered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman
Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a
little — not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the
place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell. The Sy
rians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by a sys
tem of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic.
Last year their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience — but
this year they have been increased by the addition of taxes that
were forgiven them in times of famine in former years. On
top of this the Government has levied a tax of one-tenth of the
whole proceeds of the land. This is only half the story. The
Pacha of a Pachalic does not trouble himself with appointing
tax-collectors. He figures up what all these taxes ought to
444 AN UNFORTUNATE PEOPLE.
amount to in a certain district. Then he farms the collection
out. He calls the rich men together, the highest bidder gets
the speculation, pays the Pacha on the spot, and then sells out
to smaller fry, who sell in turn to a piratical horde of still
smaller fry. These latter compel the peasant to bring his little
trifle of grain to the village, at his own cost. It must be
weighed, the various taxes set apart, and the remainder re
turned to the producer. But the collector delays this duty day
after day, while the producer's family are perishing for bread ;
at last the poor wretch, who can not but understand the game,
says, " Take a quarter — take half — take two-thirds if you will,
and let me go !" It is a most outrageous state of things.
These people are naturally good-hearted and intelligent, and
with education and liberty, would be a happy and contented
race. They often appeal to the stranger to know if the great
world will not some day come to their relief and save them.
The Sultan has been lavishing money like water in England
and Paris, but his subjects are suffering for it now.
This fashion of camping out bewilders me. We have boot
jacks and a bath-tub, now, and yet all the mysteries the pack-
mules carry are not revealed. What next ?
CHAPTEE XLIII.
WE had a tedious ride of about five hours, in the sun,
across the Valley of Lebanon. It proved to be not
quite so much of a garden as it had seemed from the hill-sides.
It was a desert, weed-grown waste, littered thickly with stones
the size of a man's fist. Here and there the natives had
scratched the ground and reared a sickly crop of grain, but
for the most part the valley was given up to a handful of shep
herds, whose flocks were doing what they honestly could to
get a living, but the chances were against them. We saw
rude piles of stones standing near the roadside, at intervals,
and recognized the custom of marking boundaries which ob
tained in Jacob's time. There were no walls, no fences, no
hedges — nothing to secure a man's possessions but these ran
dom heaps of stones. The Israelites held them sacred in the
old patriarchal times, and these other Arabs, their lineal de
scendants, do so likewise. An American, of ordinary intelli
gence, would soon widely extend his property, at an outlay of
mere manual labor, per
formed at night, under so
loose a system of fencing
as this.
The plows these people
, , 4-N OLD FOGY.
use are simply a sharp
ened stick, such as Abraham plowed with, and they still win
now their wheat as he did — they pile it on the house-top, and
then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air until the wind has
446
MAGNIFICENT BAALBEC,
blown all the chaff away. They never invent any thing, never
learn any thing.
We had a fine race, of a mile, with an Arab perched on a
camel. Some of the horses were fast, and made very good
time, but the camel scampered by them without any very
great effort. The yelling and shouting, and whipping and
RACE WITH CAMEL.
galloping, of all parties interested, made it an exhilarating,
exciting, and particularly boisterous race.
At eleven o'clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns
of Baalbec, a noble ruin whose history is a sealed book. It
has stood there for thousands of years, the wonder and admi
ration of travelers ; but who built it, or when it was built, are
questions that may never be answered. One thing is very
sure, though. Such grandeur of design, and such grace of
execution, as one sees in the temples of Baalbec, have not
MAGNIFICENT BAALBEC.
447
--
been equaled or even approached in any work of men's hands
that has been built within twenty centuries past.
The great Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Jupiter, and
several smaller temples, are clustered together in the midst of
one of these miserable Syrian villages, and look strangely
enough in such plebeian company. These temples are built
upon massive substructions that might support a world, almost;
the materials used are blocks of stone as large as an omnibus
—very few, if any of them, are smaller than a carpenter's tool
chest — and these substructions are traversed by tunnels of
masonry through which a train of cars might pass. With
such foundations as these, it is little wonder that Baalbec has
lasted so long. The
Temple of the Sun is
nearly three hundred
feet long and one
hundred and sixty feet
wide. It had fifty-
four columns around
it, but only six are
standing now — the
O
others lie broken at
its base, a confused
and picturesque heap.
The six columns are
perfect, as also are
their bases, Corinthian
capitals and entabla
ture — and six more
shapely columns do
not exist. The col
umns and the entab
lature together are
ninety feet high — a
^ ° TEMPLE OP THE SUN, BAALBEC.
prodigious altitude for
shafts of stone to reach, truly — and yet one only thinks of
their beauty and symmetry when looking at them ; the pillars
448 MAGNIFICENT BAALBEC.
look slender and delicate, the entablature, with its elaborate
sculpture, looks like rich stucco-work. But when you have
gazed aloft till your eyes are weary, you glance at the great
fragments of pillars among which you are standing, and find
that they are eight feet through ; and with them lie beautiful
capitals apparently as large as a small cottage ; and also single
slabs of stone, superbly sculptured, that are four or five feet
thick, and would completely cover the floor of any ordinary
parlor. You wonder where these monstrous things came
from, and it takes some little time to satisfy yourself that the
airy and graceful fabric that towers above your head is made
up of their mates. It seems too preposterous.
The Temple of Jupiter is a smaller ruin than the one I have
been speaking of, and yet is immense. It is in a tolerable
state of preservation. One row of nine columns stands almost
uninjured. They are sixty -five feet high and support a sort of
porch or roof, which connects them with the roof of the build
ing. This porch-roof is composed of tremendous slabs of stone,
which are so finely sculptured on the under side that the work
looks like a fresco from below. One or two of these slabs had
fallen, and again I wondered if the gigantic masses of carved
stone that lay about me were no larger than those above my
head. Within the temple, the ornamentation was elaborate
and colossal. What a wonder of architectural beauty and
grandeur this edifice must have been when it was new ! And
what a noble picture it and its statelier companion, with the
chaos of mighty fragments scattered about them, yet makes in
the moonlight !
I can not conceive how those immense blocks of stone were
ever hauled from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to
the dizzy heights they occupy in the temples. And yet these
sculptured blocks are trifles in size compared with the rough-
hewn blocks that form the wide verandah or platform which
surrounds the Great Temple, One stretch of that platform,
two hundred feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as large,
and some of them larger, than a street-car. They surmount a
wall about ten or twelve feet high. I thought those were
MAGNIFICENT BAALBEC.
449
large rocks, but they sank into insignificance compared with
those which formed another section of the platform. These
were three in number, and I thought that each of them was
KUINS OF BAALBEC.
about as long as three street cars placed end to end, though of
course they are a third wider and a third higher than a street
car. Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern,
placed end to end, might better represent their size. In com
bined length these three stones stretch nearly two hundred
feet ; they are thirteen feet square ; two of them are sixty-four
feet long each, and the third is sixty-nine. They are built
into the massive wall some twenty feet above the ground.
They are there, but how they got there is the question. I
have seen the hull of a steamboat that was smaller than one
of those stones. All these great walls are as exact and shapely
as the flimsy things we build of bricks in these days. A race
29
450
WONDERFUL STONES.
of gods or of giants must have inhabited Baalbec many a cen
tury ago. Men like the men of our day could hardly rear such
temples as these.
We went to the quarry from whence the stones of Baalbec
were taken. It was about a quarter of a mile off, and down
hill. In a great pit lay the mate of the largest stone in the
ruins. It lay there just as the giants of that old forgotten
time had left it when they were called hence — just as they had
left it, to remain for thousands of years, an eloquent rebuke
unto such as are prone to think slightingly of the men who
lived before them. Tins enormous block lies there, squared
=~ '(
HEWN STONES — IN QUARRY.
and ready for the builders' hands — a solid mass fourteen feet
by seventeen, and but a few inches less than seventy feet long !
Two buggies could be driven abreast of each other, on its sur-
PILGRIM FIDELITY TO LAW. 451
face, from one end of it to the other, and leave room enough
for a man or two to walk on either side.
One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wil
kinsons, and all the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom
Come and Baalbec would inscribe their poor little names upon
the walls of Baalbec's magnificent ruins, and would add the
town, the county and the State they came from — and swear
ing thus, be infallibly correct. It is a pity some great ruin
does not fall in and flatten out some of these reptiles, and
scare their kind out of ever giving their names to fame upon
any walls or monuments again, forever.
Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three
days' journey to Damascus. It was necessary that we should
do it in less than two. It was necessary because our three
pilgrims would not travel on the Sabbath day. We were all
perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but there are times
when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is righteous,
becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We pleaded for
the tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their faith
ful service deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot
compassion. But when did ever self-righteousness know the
sentiment of pity ? What were a few long hours added to the
hardships of some over-taxed brutes when weighed against the
peril of those human souls ? It was not the most promising
party to travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for
religion through the example of its devotees. We said the
Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must
be rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day, would not
have counseled a forced march like this. We said the ulong
trip " was exhausting and therefore dangerous in the blistering
heats of summer, even when the ordinary days' stages were
traversed, and if we persisted in this hard march, some of us
might be stricken down with the fevers of the country in con
sequence of it. Nothing could move the pilgrims. They
must press on. Men might die, horses might die, but they
must enter upon holy soil next week, writh no Sabbath-breaking
stain upon them. Thus they were willing to commit a sin
452 PILGRIM FIDELITY TO LAW.
against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might
preserve the letter of it. It was not worth while to tell them
" the letter kills." I am talking now about personal friends ;
men whom I like ; men who are good citizens ; who are hon
orable, upright, conscientious ; but whose idea of the Saviour's
religion seems to me distorted. They lecture our shortcomings
unsparingly, and every night they call us together and read to
us chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of
MERCY.
charity, and of tender mercy ; and then all the next day they
stick to their saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged
mountains, and clear down again. Apply the Testament's
gentleness, and charity, and tender mercy to a toiling, worn
and weary horse ? — Nonsense — these are for God's human
creatures, not His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to
do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I
should allow to pass — but I would so like to catch any other
member of the party riding his horse up one of these exhaust
ing hills once !
We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that
might benefit them, but it is virtue thrown away. They have
FOUNTAIN OF BAALAM'S ASS.
453
never heard a cross word out of our lips toward each other —
but they have quarreled once or twice. We love to hear them
at it, after they have been lecturing us. The very first thing
they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was to quarrel in the boat.
I have said I like them, and I do like them — but every time
they read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in print.
ISTot content with doubling the legitimate stages, they
switched off the main road
and went away out of the
way to visit an absurd
fountain called Figia, be
cause Baalam's ass had
drank there once. So we
journeyed on, through the
terrible hills and deserts
and the roasting sun, and
then far into the night,
seeking the honored pool
of Baalam's ass, the patron
saint of all pilgrims like us.
note-book :
PATRON SAINT.
I find no entry but this in my
" Rode to-day, altogether, thirteen hours, through deserts, partly, and partly over
barren, unsightly hills, and latterly through wild, rocky scenery, and camped at
about eleven o'clock at night on the banks of a limpid stream, near a Syrian village.
Do not know its name — do not wish to know it — want to go to bed. Two horses
lame (mine and Jack's) and the others worn out. Jack and I walked three or four
miles, over the hills, and led the horses. Fun— but of a mild type."
Twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle, even in a Christian
land and a Christian climate, and on a good horse, is a tire
some journey ; but in an oven like Syria, in a ragged spoon of
a saddle that slips fore-and-aft, and " thort-ships," and every
way, and on a horse that is tired and lame, and yet must be
whipped and spurred with hardly a moment's cessation all day
long, till the blood comes from his side, and your conscience
hurts you every time you strike, if you are half a man, — it is a
journey to be remembered in bitterness of spirit and execrated
with emphasis for a liberal division of a man's lifetime.
OHAPTEE XLIV.
next day was an outrage upon men and horses both.
It was another thirteen-hour stretch (including an
hour's "nooning.") It was over the barrenest chalk-hills and
through the baldest canons that even Syria can show. The
heat quivered in the air every where. In the canons we almost
smothered in the baking atmosphere. On high ground, the
reflection from the chalk-hills was blinding. It was cruel to
urge the crippled horses, but it had to be done in order to
make Damascus Saturday night. We saw ancient tombs and
temples of fanciful architecture carved out of the solid rock
high up in the face of precipices above our heads, but we had
neither time nor strength to climb up there and examine
them. The terse language of my note-book will answer for
the rest of this day's experiences :
Broke camp at 7 A. M., and made a ghastly trip through the Zeb Dana valley
and the rough mountains — horses limping and that Arab screech-owl that does
most of the singing and carries the water-skins, always a thousand miles ahead, of
course, and no water to drink — will he never die ? Beautiful stream in a chasm,
lined thick with pomegranate, fig, olive and quince orchards, and nooned an hour
at the celebrated Baalam's Ass Fountain of Figia, second in size in Syria, and the
coldest water out of Siberia — guide-books do not say Baalam's ass ever drank there
— somebody been imposing on the pilgrims, may be. Bathed in it — Jack and I.
Only a second — ice- water. It is the principal source of the Abana river — only one-
.half mile down to where it joins. Beautiful place — giant trees all around — so shady
;and cool, if one could keep awake — vast stream gushes straight out from under the
mountain in a torrent. Over it is a very ancient ruin, with no known history —
supposed to have been for the worship of the deity of the fountain or Baalam's ass
or somebody. Wretched nest of human vermin about the fountain — rags, dirt,
sunken cheeks, pallor of sickness, sores, projecting bones, dull, aching misery in
THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
455
their eyes and ravenous hunger speaking from every eloquent fibre and muscle
from head to foot. How they sprang upon a bone, how they crunched the bread
we gave them ! Such as these to swarm about one and watch every bite he takes,
with greedy looks, and swallow uncon
sciously every time he swallows, as if they
half fancied the precious morsel went
down their own throats — hurry up the
caravan I — I never shall enjoy a meal in
this distressful country. To think of eat
ing three times every day under such cir
cumstances for three weeks yet — it is
worse punishment than riding all day in
the sun. There are sixteen starving babies
from one to six years old in the party, and
their legs are no larger than broom handles.
Left the fountain at 1 p. M. (the fountain
took us at least two hours out of our way,)
and reached Mahomet's lookout perch, over
Damascus, in time to get a good long look
before it was necessary to move on.
Tired? Ask of the winds that far away
with fragments strewed the sea."
WATER CARRIER.
As the glare of day mellowed into twilight, we looked down
upon a picture which is celebrated all over the world. I think
I have read about four hundred times that when Mahomet was
a simple camel-driver he reached this point and looked down
upon Damascus for the first time, and then made a certain re
nowned remark. He said man could enter only one paradise ;
he preferred to go to the one above. So he sat down there and
feasted his eyes upon the earthly paradise of Damascus, and
then went away without entering its gates. They have erected
a tower on the hill to mark the spot where he stood.
Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful
even to foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I
can easily understand how unspeakably beautiful it must be to
eyes that are only used to the God-forsaken barrenness and
desolation of Syria. I should think a Syrian would go wild
with ecstacy when such a picture bursts upon him for the first
time.
From his high perch, one sees before him and below him, a
wall of dreary mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely
456 THE BEAUTIFUL CITY.
in the sun ; it fences in a level desert of yellow sand, smooth
as velvet and threaded far away with fine lines that stand for
roads, and dotted with creeping mites we know are camel-
trains and journeying men ; right in the midst of the desert
is spread a billowy expanse of green foliage ; and nestling in
its heart sits the great white city, like an island of pearls and
opals gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. This is the picture
you see spread far below you, with distance to soften it, the
sun to glorify it, strong contrasts to heighten the effects, and
over it and about it a drowsing air of repose to spiritualize it
and make it seem rather a beautiful estray from the mysterious
worlds we visit in dreams than a substantial tenant of our
coarse, dull globe. And when you think of the leagues of
blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infa
mous country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is
the most beautiful, beautiful picture, that ever human eyes
rested upon in all the broad universe ! If I were to go to
Damascus again, I would camp on Mahomet's hill about a
week, and then go away. There is no need to go inside the
walls. The Prophet was wise without knowing it when he
decided not to go down into the paradise of Damascus.
There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden
which Damascus stands in was the Garden of Eden, and
modern writers have gathered up many chapters of evidence
tending to show that it really was the Garden of Eden, and
that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the " two rivers " that
watered Adam's Paradise. It may be so, but it is not paradise
now, and one would be as happy outside of it as he would be
likely to be within. It is so crooked and cramped and dirty
that one can not realize that he is in the splendid city he saw
from the hill-top. The gardens are hidden by high mud-walls,
and the paradise is become a very sink of pollution and un-
comeliness. Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it,
though, and this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it
beautiful and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria.
We run railways by our large cities in America ; in Syria they
curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre little
DAMASCUS THE ETERNAL. 457
puddles they call " fountains," and which are not found oftener
on a journey than every four hours. But the " rivers " of
Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through
Damascus, and so every house and every garden have their
sparkling fountains and rivulets of water. With her forest of
foliage and her abundance of water, Damascus must be a
wonder of wonders to the Bedouin from the deserts. Damas
cus is simply an oasis — that is what it is. For four thousand
years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed. Now
we can understand why the city has existed so long. It could
not die. • So long as its waters remain to it away out there in
the midst of that howling desert, so long will Damascus live
to bless the sight of the tired and thirsty wayfarer.
" Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of spring, blooming as
thine own rose-bud, and fragrant as thine own orange flower, 0 Damascus, pearl of
the East!"
Damascus dates back anterior to the days of Abraham, and
is the oldest city in the world. It was founded by Uz, the
grandson of Noah. ik The early history of Damascus is
shrouded in the mists of a hoary antiquity." Leave the
matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old
Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the
world but Damascus was in existence to receive the news of
it. Go back as far as you wrill into the vague past, there was
always a Damascus. In the writings of every century for
more than four thousand years, its name has been mentioned
and its praises sung. To Damascus, years are only moments,
decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time,
not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has
seen rise, and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of
immortality. She. saw the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes,
and Ephesus laid ; she saw these villages grow into mighty
cities, and amaze the world with their grandeur — and she has
lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given over to the
owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted,
and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and flourish
458 DAMASCUS THE ETERNAL.
two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome
built ; she saw it overshadow the world with its power ; she
saw it perish. The few hundreds of years of Genoese and
Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old Damascus,
only a trifling scintillation hardly worth remembering. Da
mascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still
she lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand
empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she
dies. Though another claims the name, old Damascus is by
right the Eternal City.
We reached the city gates just at sundown. They do say
that one can get into any walled city of Syria, after night, for
bucksheesh, except Damascus. But Damascus, with its four
thousand years of respectability in the world, has many old
fogy notions. There are no street lamps there, and the law
compels all who go abroad at night to carry lanterns, just as
was the case in old days, when heroes and heroines of the
Arabian Nights walked the streets of Damascus, or flew away
toward Bagdad on enchanted carpets.
It was fairly dark a few minutes after we got within the
wall, and we rode long distances through wonderfully crooked
streets, eight to ten feet wide, and shut in on either side by the
high mud-walls of the gardens. At last we got to where lanterns
could be seen flitting about here and there, and knew we were
in the midst of the curious old city. In a little narrow street,
crowded with our pack-mules and with a swarm of uncouth
Arabs, we alighted, and through a kind of a hole in the wall
entered the hotel. We stood in a great flagged court, with
flowers and citron trees about us, and a huge tank in the centre
that was receiving the waters of many pipes. We crossed the
court and entered the rooms prepared to receive four of us. In
a large marble-paved recess between the two rooms was a tank
of clear, cool water, which was kept running over all the time
by the streams that were pouring into it from half a dozen
pipes. Nothing, in this scorching, desolate land could look so
refreshing as this pure water flashing in the lamp-light;
nothing could look so beautiful, nothing could sound so deli-
ORIENTAL LUXURY. 459
clous as this mimic rain to ears long unaccustomed to sounds
of such a nature. Our rooms were large, comfortably fur
nished, and even had their floors clothed with soft, cheerful-
tinted carpets. It was a pleasant thing to see a carpet again,
for if there is any thing drearier than the tomb-like, stone-
paved parlors and bed-rooms of Europe and Asia, I do not
know what it is. They make one think of the grave all the
time. A very broad, gaily caparisoned divan, some twelve or
fourteen feet long, extended across one side of each room, and
opposite were single beds with spring mattrasses. There were
great looking-glasses and marble-top tables. All this luxury
was as grateful to systems and senses wrorn out with an
exhausting day's travel, as it was unexpected — for one can not
tell what to expect in a Turkish city of even a quarter of a
million inhabitants.
I do not know, but I think they used that tank between the
rooms to draw drinking water from ; that did not occur to me,
however, until I had dipped my baking head far down into its
cool depths. I thought of it then, and superb as the bath was,
I was sorry I had taken it, and was about to go and explain to
the landlord. But a finely curled and scented poodle dog
frisked up and nipped the calf of my leg just then, and before
I had time to think, I had soused him to the bottom of the
tank, and when I saw a servant coming with a pitcher I went
off and left the pup trying to climb out and not succeeding
very well. Satisfied revenge was all I needed to make me
perfectly happy, and when I walked in to supper that first
night in Damascus I was in that condition. We lay on those
divans a long time, after supper, smoking narghilies and long-
stemmed chibouks, and talking about the dreadful ride of the
day, and I knew then what I had sometimes known before —
that it is worth while to get tired out, because one so enjoys
resting afterward.
In the morning we sent for donkeys. It is worthy of note
that we had to send for these things. I said Damascus was an
old fossil, and she is. Any where else wre would have been
assailed by a clamorous army of donkey-drivers, guides,
460
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.
peddlers and beggars — but in Damascus they so hate the very
sight of a foreign Christian that they want no intercourse
whatever with him ; only a year or two ago, his person was
not always safe in Damascus streets. It is the most fanatical
Mohammedan purgatory out of Arabia. Where you see one
green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the honored sign that my
lord has made the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you will see a
dozen in Damascus. The Damascenes are the ugliest, wicked
est looking villains we have seen. All the veiled women we
had seen yet, nearly, left their eyes exposed, but numbers of
these in Damascus completely hid the face under a close-drawn
black veil that made the woman look like a mummy. If ever
we caught an eye exposed it was quickly hidden from our con
taminating Christian vision ; the beggars actually passed us by
without demanding bucksheesh ; the merchants in the bazaars
did not hold up their
goods and cry out eager
ly, "Hey, John!" or
" Look this, Howajji !"
On the contrary, they
only scowled at us and
said never a word.
The narrow streets
swarmed like a hive with
men and women in
strange Oriental cos
tumes, and our small
donkeys knocked them
right and left as we
plowed through them,
urged on by the merci
less donkey-boys. These
persecutors run after the
animals, shouting and
goading them for hours
together; they keep the
donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired themselves or
STREET CARS OF DAMASCUS.
HOUSE OF JUDAS. 461
fall behind. The donkeys fell down and spilt us over their
heads occasionally, but there was nothing for it but to mount
and hurry on again. We were banged against sharp corners,
loaded porters, camels, and citizens generally ; and we were so
taken up with looking out for collisions and casualties that we
had no chance to look about us at all. We rode half through
the city and through the famous u street which is called
Straight " without seeing any thing, hardly. Our bones were
nearly knocked out of joint, we were wild with excitement,
and our sides ached with the jolting we had suffered. I do
not like riding in the Damascus street-cars
We were on our way to the reputed houses of Judas and
Ananias. About eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago,
Saul, a native of Tarsus, was particularly bitter against the
new sect called Christians, and he left Jerusalem and* started
across the country on a furious crusade against them. He
went forth " breathing threatenings and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord."
"And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined round
about him a light from heaven :
"And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, 'Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me ?'
"And when he knew that it was Jesus that spoke to him he trembled, and was
astonished, and said, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' "
He was told to arise and go into the ancient city and one
would tell him what to do. In the meantime his soldiers
stood speechless and awe-stricken, for they heard the mysteri
ous voice but saw no man. Saul rose up and found that that
fierce supernatural light had destroyed his sight, and he was
blind, so " they led him by the hand and brought him to Da
mascus." He was converted.
Paul lay three days, blind, in the house of Judas, and during
that time he neither ate nor drank.
There came a voice to a citizen of Damascus, named Ana
nias, saying, "Arise, and go into the street which is called
Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas, for one called
Saul, of Tarsus ; for behold, he prayeth,"
462 THE
Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he had heard of Saul
before, and he had his doubts about that style of a " chosen
vessel " to preach the gospel of peace. However, in obedience
to orders, he went into the " street called Straight " (how he
ever found his way into it, and after he did, how he ever found
his way out of it again, are mysteries only to be accounted for
by the fact that he was acting under Divine inspiration.) He
found Paul and restored him, and ordained him a preacher ;
and from this old house we had hunted up in the street which
is miscalled Straight, he had started out on that bold mission
ary career which he prosecuted till his death. It was not the
house of the disciple who sold the Master for thirty pieces of
silver. I make this explanation in justice to Judas, who was
a far different sort of man from the person just referred to.
A very different style of man, and lived in a very good house.
It is a pity we do not know more about him.
I have given, in the above paragraphs, some more informa
tion for people who will not read Bible history until they are
defrauded into it by some such method as this. I hope that
no friend of progress and education will obstruct or interfere
with my peculiar mission.
The street called Straight is straighter than a corkscrew, but
not as straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to com
mit himself; he does not say it is the street which is straight,
but the " street which is called Straight." It is a fine piece of
irony ; it is the only facetious remark in the Bible, I believe.
AVe traversed the street called Straight a good way, and then
turned off and called at the reputed house of Ananias. There
is small question that a part of the original house is there still ;
it is an old room twelve or fifteen feet under ground, and its
masonry is evidently ancient. If Ananias did not live there in
St. Paul's time, somebody else did, which is just as well. I
took a drink out of Ananias' well, and singularly enough, the
water was just as fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday.
We went out toward the north end of the city to see the
place where the disciples let Paul down over the Damascus
wall at dead of night — for he preached Christ so fearlessly
A CARNIVAL OF BLOOD. 463
in Damascus that the people sought to kill him, just as they
would to-day for the same offense, and he had to escape and
flee to Jerusalem.
Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet's children and at a
tomb which purported to be that of St. George who killed the
dragon, and so on out to the hollow place under a rock where
Paul liid during his flight till his pursuers gave him up ; and
to the mausoleum of the five thousand Christians who were
massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks. They say
those narro\v streets ran blood for several days, and that men,
women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left
to rot by hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they
say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the Christians
who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans
would not defile their hands by burying the " infidel dogs."
The thirst for .blood extended to the high lands of Ilermon and
Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more
Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste.
How they hate a Christian in Damascus ! — and pretty much
all over Turkeydom as well. And how they will pay for it
when Russia turns her guns upon them again !
It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for
interposing to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction
it has so richly deserved for a thousand years. It hurts my
vanity to see these pagans refuse to eat of food that has been
cooked for us ; or to eat from a dish we have eaten from ; or
to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted with our
Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag
which they put over the mouth of it or through a sponge ! I
never disliked a Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and
Arabs, and when Russia is ready to war with them again, I
hope England and France will not find it good breeding or
good judgment to interfere.
In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the
world as their little Abana and Pharpar. The Damascenes
have always thought that way. In 2 Kings, chapter v., Na*a-
man boasts extravagantly about them. That was three thou-
464
sand years ago. lie says : " Are not Abana and Pliarpar,
rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel ? May
I not wash in them and be clean ?" But some of my readers
have forgotten who Naaman was, long ago. Naaman was
the commander of the Syrian armies. He was the favor
ite of the king and lived in great state. " He was a mighty
man of valor, but he was a leper." Strangely enough, the
house they point out to you now as his, has been turned into a
leper hospital, and the inmates expose their horrid deformities
and hold up their hands and beg for bucksheesh when a
stranger enters.
One can not appreciate the horror of this disease until he
looks upon it in all its ghastliness, in Naaman's ancient dwell
ing in Damascus. Bones all twisted out of shape, great knots
protruding from face and body, joints decaying and dropping
away— -horrible !
CHAPTEE XLY.
THE last twenty-four hours we staid in Damascus I lay
prostrate with a violent attack of cholera, or cholera
morbus, and therefore had a good chance and a good excuse to
lie there on that wide divan and take an honest rest. I had
nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the fountains and
take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous recre
ation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria. I had
plenty of snow from Mount Ilermon, and as it would not stay
on my stomach, there was nothing to interfere with my eating
it — there was always room for more. I enjoyed myself very
well. Syrian travel has its interesting features, like travel in
any other part of the world, and yet to break your leg or have
the cholera adds a welcome variety to it.
"We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a
couple of hours, and then the party stopped a while in the
shade of some fig-trees to give me a chance to rest. It was
the hottest day we had seen yet — the sun-flames shot down
like the shafts of fire that stream out before a blow-pipe ; the
rays seemed to fall in a steady deluge on the head and pass
downward like rain from a roof. I imagined I could distin
guish between the floods of rays — I thought I could tell when
each flood struck my head, when it reached my shoulders, and
when the next one came. It was terrible. All the desert
glared so fiercely that my eyes were swimming in tears all the
time. The boys had white umbrellas heavily lined with dark
green. They were a priceless blessing. I thanked fortune
that I had one, too, notwithstanding it was packed up with
30
468 GEAVE OF NIMROD.
recognize the Arab names or try to pronounce them. When
I say that that village is of the usual style, I mean to insin
uate that all Syrian villages within h'fty miles of Damascus are
alike — so much alike that it would require more than human
intelligence to tell wherein one differed from another. A Sy
rian village is a hive of huts one story high (the height of a
man,) and as square as a dry-goods box ; it is mud-plastered
all over, flat roof and all, and generally whitewashed after a
fashion. The same roof often extends over half the town, cov
ering many of the streets, which are generally about a yard
wide. When you ride through one of these villages at noon
day, you first meet a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and
silently begs that you won't run over him, but he does not
offer to get out of the way ; next you meet a young boy with
out any clothes on, and he holds out his hand and says " Buck-
sheesh !" — he don't really expect a cent, but then he learned to
say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can not
break himself of it ; next you meet a woman with a black veil
drawn closely over her face, and her bust exposed ; finally, you
come to several sore-eyed children and children in all stages of
mutilation and decay ; and sitting humbly in the dust, and all
fringed with filthy rags, is a poor devil whose arms and legs
are gnarled and twisted like grape-vines. These are all the
people you are likely to see. The balance of the population
are asleep within doors, or abroad tending goats in the plains
and on the hill-sides. The village is built on some consumptive
little water-course, and about it is a little fresh-looking vege
tation. Beyond this charmed circle, for miles on every side,
stretches a weary desert of sand and gravel, which produces a
gray bunchy shrub like sage-brush. A Syrian village is the
sorriest sight in the world, and its surroundings are eminently
in keeping with it.
I would not have gone into this dissertation upon Syrian
villages but for the fact that ISTimrod, the Mighty Hunter of
Scriptural notoriety, is buried in Jonesborough, and I wished
the public to know about how he is located. Like Homer, he
is said to be buried in many other places, but this is the only
true and genuine place his ashes inhabit.
A STATELY RUIN. 469
When the original tribes were dispersed, more than four
thousand years ago, Nimrod and a large party traveled three
or four hundred miles, and settled where the great city of
Babylon afterwards stood. Nimrod built that city. He also
began to build the famous Tower of Babel, but circumstances
over which he had no control put it out of his power to finish
it. He ran it up eight stories high, however, and two of them
still stand, at this day — a colossal mass of brickwork, rent
down the centre by earthquakes, and seared and vitrified by
the lightnings of an angry God. But the vast ruin will still
stand for ages, to shame the puny labors of these modern gen
erations of men. Its huge compartments are tenanted by owls
and lions, and old Nimrod lies neglected in this wretched vil
lage, far from the scene of his grand enterprise.
We left Jonesborough very early in the morning, and rode
forever and forever and forever, it seemed to me, over parched
deserts and rocky hills, hungry, and with no water to drink.
We had drained the goat-skins dry in a little while. At noon
we halted before the wretched Arab town of El Yuba Dam,
perched on the side of a mountain, but the dragoman said if
w^e applied there for water we would be attacked by the whole
tribe, for they did not love Christians. We had to journey on.
Two hours later we reached the foot of a tall isolated moun
tain, which is crowned by the crumbling castle of Banias, the
stateliest ruin of that kind on earth, no doubt. It is a thou
sand feet long and two hundred wide, all of the most symmet
rical, and at the same time the most ponderous masonry. The
massive towers and bastions are more than thirty feet high,
and have been sixty. From the mountain's peak its broken
turrets rise above the groves of ancient oaks and olives, and
look wonderfully picturesque. It is of such high antiquity
that no man knows who built it or when it was built. It is ut
terly inaccessible, except in one place, where a bridle-path
winds upward among the solid rocks to the old portcullis.
The horses' hoofs have bored holes in these rocks to the depth
of six inches during the hundreds and hundreds of years that
the castle was garrisoned. We wrandered for three hours
•
470 ENTERING HOLY LAND.
among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of the fortress,
and trod where the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader
had rang, and where Phenician heroes had walked ages before
them.
We wondered how such a solid mass of masonry could be
affected even by an earthquake, and could not understand
what agency had made Banias a ruin ; but we found the de
stroyer, after a while, and then our wonder was increased ten
fold. Seeds had fallen in crevices in the vast walls ; the seeds
had sprouted ; the tender, insignificant sprouts had hardened ;
they grew larger and larger, and by a steady, imperceptible
pressure forced the great stones apart, and now are bringing
sure destruction upon a giant work that has even mocked the
earthquakes to scorn ! Gnarled and twisted trees spring from
the old walls every where, and beautify and overshadow the
gray battlements with a wrild luxuriance of foliage.
From these old towers we looked down upon a broad, far-
reaching green plain, glittering with the pools and rivulets
which are the sources of the sacred river Jordan. It was a
grateful vision, after so much desert.
And as the evening drew near, we clambered down the
mountain, through groves of the Biblical oaks of Bashan, (for
we were just stepping over the border and entering the long-
sought Holy Land,) and at its extreme foot, toward the wide
valley, we entered this little execrable village of Banias and
camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of spark
ling water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates
and oleanders in full leaf. Barring the proximity of the vil
lage, it is a sort of paradise.
The very first thing one feels like doing when he gets into
camp, all burning up and dusty, is to hunt up a bath. We
followed the stream up to where it gushes out of the mountain
side, three hundred yards from the tents, and took a bath that
was so icy that if I did not know this was the main source of
the sacred river, I would expect harm to come of it. It was
bathing at noonday in the chilly source of the Abana, " Eiver
of Damascus," that gave me the cholera, so Dr. B. said. How
ever, it generally does give me the cholera to take-p bath.
BIRTHPLACE OF CHURCH OF ROME. 471
The incorrigible pilgrims have come in with their pockets
full of specimens broken from the ruins. I wish this vandal
ism could be stopped. They broke off fragments from Noah's
tomb ; from the exquisite sculptures of the temples of Baalbec;
from the houses of Judas and Ananias, in Damascus ; from
the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter in Jonesborough ;
from the worn Greek and Roman inscriptions set in the hoary
walls of the Castle of Banias ; and now they have been hack
ing and chipping these old arches here that Jesus looked upon
in the flesh. Heaven protect the Sepulchre when this tribe
invades Jerusalem !
The ruins here are not very interesting. There are the
massive walls of a great square building that was once the cit
adel ; there are many ponderous old arches that are so smoth
ered with debris that they barely project above the ground ;
there are heavy-walled sewers through which the crystal brook
of which Jordan is born still runs ; in the hill-side are the sub
structions of a costly marble temple that Herod the Great
built here — patches of its handsome mosaic floors still remain ;
there is a quaint old stone bridge that was here before Herod's
time, may be ; scattered every where, in the paths and in the
woods, are Corinthian capitals, broken porphyry pillars, and
little fragments of sculpture ; and up yonder in the precipice
where the fountain gushes out, are well-worn Greek inscrip
tions over niches in the rock where in ancient times the Greeks,
and after them the Romans, worshipped the sylvan god Pan.
But trees and bushes grow above many of these ruins now ;
the miserable huts of a little crew of filthy Arabs are perched
upon the broken masonry of antiquity, the whole place has a
sleepy, stupid, rural look about it, and one can hardly bring
himself to believe that a busy, substantially built city once ex
isted here, even two thousand years ago. The place was nev
ertheless the scene of an event whose effects have added page
after page and volume after volume to the world's history.
For in this place Christ stood when he said to Peter :
"Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the King-
472 ON HOLY GROUND.
dom of Heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
On those little sentences have been built up the mighty edi
fice of the Church of Home ; in them lie the authority for the
imperial power of the Popes over temporal affairs, and their
godlike power to curse a soul or wash it white from sin. To
sustain the position of " the only true Church," which Rome
claims was thus conferred upon her, she has fought and labored
and struggled for many a century, and will continue to keep
herself busy in the same work to the end of time. The mem
orable words I have quoted give to this ruined city about all
the interest it possesses to people of the present day.
It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground that
was once actually pressed by the feet of the Saviour. The
situation is suggestive of a reality and a, tangibility that seem
at variance with the vagueness and mystery and ghostliness
that one naturally attaches to the character of a god. I can
not comprehend yet that I am sitting where a god has stood,
and looking upon the brook and the mountains which that god
looked upon, and am surrounded by dusky men and women
whose ancestors saw him, and even talked with him, face to
face, and carelessly, just as they would have done with any
other stranger. I can not comprehend this ; the gods of my
understanding have been always hidden in clouds and very far
away.
This morning, during breakfast, the usual assemblage of
squalid humanity sat patiently without the charmed circle of
the camp and waited for such crumbs as pity might bestow
upon their misery. There were old and young, brown-skinned
and yellow. Some of the men were tall and stalwart, (for one
hardly sees any where such splendid-looking men as here in the
East,) but all the women and children looked worn and sad,
and distressed with hunger. They reminded me much of In
dians, did these people. They had but little clothing, but such
as they had was fanciful in character and fantastic in its ar
rangement. Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they had
they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention
PECULIARITIES. 473
most readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience
watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impo
liteness which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white
man so nervous and uncomfortable and savage that he wants
to exterminate the whole tribe.
These people about us had other peculiarities, which I have
noticed in the noble red man, too : they were infested with
vermin, and the dirt had caked on them till it amounted to
bark.
The little children were in a pitiable condition — they all had
sore eyes, and were otherwise afflicted in various ways. They
say that hardly a native child in all the East is free from sore
eyes, and that thousands of them go blind of one eye or both
every year. I think this must be so, for I see plenty of blind
people every day, and I do not remember seeing any children
that hadn't sore eyes. And, would you suppose that an Amer
ican mother could sit for an hour, with her child in her arms,
and let a hundred flies roost upon its eyes all that time undis
turbed? I see that every day. It makes my flesh creep.
Yesterday we met a woman riding on a little jackass, and she
had a little child in her arms ; honestly, I thought the child
had goggles on as we approached, and I wondered how its
mother could afford so much style. But when we drew near,
we saw that the goggles were nothing but a camp meeting of
flies assembled around each of the child's eyes, and at the
same time there was a detachment prospecting its nose. The
flies were happy, the child was contented, and so the mother
did not interfere.
As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our
party, they began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the
charity of his nature, had taken a child from a woman who
sat near by, and put some sort of a wash upon its diseased
eyes. That woman went oft* and started the whole nation, and
it was a sight to see them swarm ! The lame, the halt, the
blind, the leprous — all the distempers that are bred of indo
lence, dirt, and iniquity — wereVepresented in the Congress in
ten minutes, and still they came ! Every woman that had a
HEALING THE SICK.
sick baby brought it along, and every woman that hadn't, bor
rowed one. What reverent and what worshiping looks they
bent upon that dread, mysterious power, the Doctor ! They
watched him take his phials out ; they watched him measure
the particles of white powder ; they watched him add drops
of one precious liquid, and drops of another ; they lost not the
slightest movement ; their eyes were riveted upon him with a
IMPROMPTU HOSPITAL.
fascination that nothing could distract. I believe they thought
he was gifted like a god. When each individual got his por
tion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with joy — notwith
standing by nature they are a thankless and impassive race —
and upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that
nothing on earth could prevent the patient from getting well
now.
Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures : He healed the sick. They flocked
to our poor human doctor this morning when the fame of what
he had done to the sick chilft went abroad in the land, and
they worshiped him with their eyes while they did not know
THE PRINCESS. 475
as yet whether there was virtue in his simples or not. The
ancestors of these — people precisely like them in color, dress,
manners, customs, simplicity — flocked in vast multitudes after
Christ, and when they saw Him make the afflicted whole with
a word, it is no wonder they worshiped Him. No wonder
His deeds were the talk of the nation. No wonder the multi
tude that followed Him was so great that at one time — thirty
miles from here — they had to let a sick man down through the
roof because no approach could be made to the door; no won
der His audiences were so great at Galilee that He had to
preach from a ship removed a little distance from the shore ;
no wonder that even in the desert places about Bethsaida, five
thousand invaded His solitude, and He had to feed them by a
miracle or else see them suffer for their confiding faith and de
votion ; no wonder when there was a great commotion in a
city in those days, one neighbor explained it to another in
words to this eftect : " They say that Jesus of Nazareth is
come !"
Well, as I was saying, the doctor distributed medicine as
long as he had any to distribute, and his reputation is mighty
in Galilee this day. Among his patients was the child of the
Shiek's daughter — for even this poor, ragged handful of sores
and sin has its royal Shiek — a poor old mummy that looked as
if he would be more at home in a poor-house than in the Chief
Magistracy of this tribe of hopeless, shirtless savages. The
princess — I mean the Shiek's daughter — was only thirteen or
fourteen years old, and had a very sweet face and a pretty one.-
She was the only Syrian female we have seen yet who was not
so sinfully ugly that she couldn't smile after ten o'clock Satur
day night without breaking the Sabbath. Her child was a
hard specimen, though — there wasn't enough of it to mjike a
pie, and the poor little thing looked so pleadingly up at all
who came near it (as if it had an idea that now was its chance
or never,) that we were filled with compassion which was gen
uine and not put on.
But this last new horse I have got is trying to break his
neck over the tent-ropes, and I shall have to go out and anchor
476
A NOBLE RUIN.
him. Jericho and I have parted company. The new horse is
not much to boast of, I think. One of his hind legs bends the
wrong way, and the other one is as straight and stiff as a tent-
pole. Most
of his teeth
THE HOUSE "BAALBEC."
are
and he is as
blind as a
bat. His
nose has
been broken
at some time
or other, and
is arched
like a cul
now.
under
hangs
vert
His
lip
down like a camel's, and his ears are chopped off close to his
head. I had some trouble at first to find a name for him, but
I finally concluded to call him Baalbec, because he is such a
magnificent ruin. I can not keep from talking about my
horses, because I have a very long and tedious journey before
me, and they naturally occupy my thoughts about as much as
matters of apparently much greater importance.
We satisfied our pilgrims by making those hard rides from
•Baalbec to Damascus, but Dan's horse and Jack's were so crip
pled we had to leave them behind and get fresh animals for
them. The dragoman says Jack's horse died. I swapped
horses with Mohammed, the kingly-looking Egyptian who is
our Ferguson's lieutenant. By Ferguson I mean our dragoman
Abraham, of course. I did not take this horse on account of
his personal appearance, but because I have not seen his back.
I do riot wish to see it. I have seen the backs of all the other
horses, and found most of them covered with dreadful saddle-
boils which I know have not been washed or doctored for
years. The idea of riding all day long over such ghastly in-
MORE SENTIMENTAL BOSH. 477
quisitions of torture is sickening. My horse must be like the
others, but I have at least the consolation of not knowing it
to be so.
I hope that in future I may be spared any more sentimental
praises of the Arab's idolatry of his horse. In boyhood I
longed to be an Arab of the desert and have a beautiful mare,
and call her Selim or Benjamin or Mohammed, and feed her
with my own hands, and let her come into the tent, and teach
her to caress me and look fondly upon me with her great ten
der eyes ; and I wished that a stranger might come at such a
time and offer me a hundred thousand dollars for her, so that
I could do like the other Arabs — hesitate, yearn for the money,
but overcome by my love for my mare, at last say, " Part with
thee, my beautiful one ! Never with my life ! Away, tempt
er, I scorn thy gold !" and then bound into the saddle and
speed over the desert like the wind !
But I recall those aspirations. If these Arabs be like the
other Arabs, their love for their beautiful mares is a fraud.
These of my acquaintance have no love for their horses, no
sentiment of pity for them, and no knowledge of how to treat
them or care for them. The Syrian saddle-blanket is a quilted
mattrass two or three inches thick. It is never removed from
the horse, day or night. It gets full of dirt and hair, and be
comes soaked with sweat. It is bound to breed sores. These
pirates never think of washing a horse's back. They do not
shelter the horses in the tents, either ; they must stay out and
take the weather as it comes. Look at poor cropped and dilapr
idated " Baalbec," and weep for the sentiment that has been
wasted upon the Selims of romance !
OHAPTEE XLVI.
A BOUT an hour's ride over a rough, rocky road, half
-£j- flooded with water, and through a forest of oaks of
Bashan, brought us to Dan.
From a little mound here in the plain issues a broad stream
of limpid water and forms a large shallow pool, and then
rushes furiously onward, augmented in volume. This puddle
is an important source of the Jordan. Its banks, and those of
the brook are respectably adorned with blooming oleanders,
but the unutterable beauty of the spot will not throw a well-
balanced man into convulsions, as the Syrian books of travel
would lead one to suppose.
From the spot I am speaking of, a cannon-ball would carry
beyond the confines of Holy Land and light upon profane
ground three miles away. We were only one little hour's
travel within the borders of Holy Land — we had hardly begun
to appreciate yet that we were standing upon any different
sort of earth than that we had always been used to, and yet
see how the historic names began already to cluster ! Dan —
Bashan — Lake Huleh — the Sources of Jordan — the Sea of
Galilee. They were all in sight but the last, and it was not
far away. The little township of Bashan was once the kingdom
so famous in Scripture for its bulls and its oaks. Lake Huleh
is the Biblical " Waters of Merom." Dan was the northern
and Beersheba the southern limit of Palestine — hence the
expression " from Dan to Beersheba." It is equivalent to our
phrases " from Maine to Texas " — " from Baltimore to San
Francisco." Our expression and that of the Israelites both
SMALLNESS OF PALESTINE.
479
OAK OF BASHAN.
mean the same — great distance. With their slow camels and
asses, it was about a seven days' journey from Dan to Beer-
sheba — say a hundred and fifty or sixty miles — it was the
entire length
of their coun
try, and was
not to be un-
dertaken
without great
preparation
and much cer
emony. When
the Prodigal
traveled to " a
far country,"
it is not likely
that he went
more than
eighty or ninety miles. Palestine is only from forty to sixty
miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split into three
Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for
part of another — possibly a whole one. From Baltimore to
San Francisco is several thousand miles, but it will be only a
seven days' journey in the cars when I am two or three years
older.* If I live I shall necessarily have to go across the con
tinent every now and then in those cars, but one journey from
Dan to Beerslteba will be sufficient, no doubt. It must be the
most trying of the two. Therefore, if we chance to discover
that from Dan to Beersheba seemed a mighty stretch of coun
try to the Israelites, let us not be airy with them, but reflect
that it ivas and is a mighty stretch when one can not traverse
it by rail.
The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once
occupied by the Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibus
ters from Zorah and Eschol captured the place, and lived there
* The railroad has been completed, since the above was written.
480 REMINISCENCE OF LOT.
in a free and easy way, worshiping gods of their own manu
facture and stealing idols from their neighbors whenever they
wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to
fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous
trips to Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to
their rightful allegiance. With all respect for those ancient
Israelites, I can not overlook the fact that they were not
always virtuous enough to withstand the seductions of a
golden calf. Human nature has not changed much since
then.
Some forty centuries ago the city of Sodom was pillaged by
the Arab princes of Mesopotamia, and among other prisoners
they seized upon the patriarch Lot and brought him here on
their way to their own possessions. They brought him to
Dan, and father Abraham, who was pursuing them, crept
softly in at dead of night, among the whispering oleanders
and under the shadows of the stately oaks, and fell upon the
slumbering victors and startled them from their dreams with
the clash of steel. He recaptured Lot and all the other
plunder.
We moved on. We wTere now in a green valley, five or six
miles wide and fifteen long. The streams which are called
the sources of the Jordan flow through it to Lake Huleh, a
shallow pond three miles in diameter, and from the southern
extremity of the Lake the concentrated Jordan flows out.
The Lake is surrounded by a broad marsh, grown with reeds.
Between the marsh and the mountains which wall the valley
is a respectable strip of fertile land ; at the end of the valley,
toward Dan, as much as half the land is solid and fertile, and
watered by Jordan's sources. There is enough of it to make a
farm. It almost warrants the enthusiasm of the spies of that
rabble of adventurers who captured Dan. They said : " We
have seen the land, and behold it is very good. * * * A
place where there is no want of any thing that is in the
earth."
Their enthusiasm was at least warranted by the fact that
they had never seen a country as good as this. There was
JOSEPH RESURRECTED. 481
enough of it for the ample support of their six hundred men
and their families, too.
When we got fairly down on the level part of the Danite
farm, we came to places where we could actually run our
horses. It was a notable circumstance.
We had been painfully clambering over interminable hills
and rocks for days together, and when we suddenly came
upon this astonishing piece of reckless plain, every man drove
the spurs into his horse and sped away with a velocity he
could surely enjoy to the utmost, but could never hope to
comprehend in Syria.
Here were evidences of cultivation — a rare sight in this
country — an acre or two of rich soil studded with last season's
dead corn-stalks of the thickness of your thumb and very wide
apart. But in such a land it was a thrilling spectacle. Close
to it was a stream, and on its banks a great herd of curious-
looking Syrian goats and sheep were gratefully eating gravel.
I do not state this as a petrified fact — I only suppose they were
eating gravel, because there did not appear to be any thing
else 'for them to eat. The shepherds that tended them were
the very pictures of Joseph and his brethren I have no doubt
in the world. They were tall, muscular, and very dark-
skinned Bedouins, with inky black beards. They had firm
lips, unquailing eyes, and a kingly stateliness of bearing.
They wore the parti-colored half bonnet, half hood, with
fringed ends falling upon their shoulders, and the full, flowing
robe barred with broad black stripes — the dress one sees in all
pictures of the swarthy sons of the desert. These chaps would
sell their younger brothers if they had a chance, I think.
They have the manners, the customs, the dress, the occupation
and the loose principles of the ancient stock. [They attacked
our camp last night, and I bear them no good will.] They
had with them the pigmy jackasses one sees all over Syria and
remembers in all pictures of the " Flight into Egypt," where
Mary and the Young Child are riding and Joseph is walking
alongside, towering high above the little donkey's shoulders.
But really, here the man rides and carries the child, as a
31
482
A WEARY LAND.
general thing, and the woman walks. The customs have not
changed since Joseph's time. We would not have in our
houses a picture representing Joseph riding and Mary walk
ing ; we would see profanation in it, but a Syrian Christian
would not. I know that hereafter the picture I first spoke of
will look odd to me.
We could not stop to rest two or three hours out from our
camp, of course, albeit the brook was beside us. So we went
on an hour longer. We saw water, then, but nowhere in all
the waste around was there a foot of shade, and we were
scorching to death. " Like unto the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land." Nothing in the Bible is more beautiful
than that, and surely there is no place we have wandered to
that is able to give it such touching expression as this blister
ing, naked, treeless land.
Here you do not stop just when you please, but when you
can. We found water, but no
shade. We traveled on and found
a tree at last, but no water. We
rested and lunched, and came on
to this place, Ain Mellahah (the
boys call it Baldwinsville.) It
was a very short day's run, but
the dragoman does not want to
go further, and has invented a
plausible lie about the country
beyond this being infested by fe
rocious Arabs, who would make
sleeping in their midst a danger
ous pastime. Well, they ought
to be dangerous. They carry a
rusty old weather-beaten flint
lock gun, with a barrel that is
longer than themselves ; it has no sights on it ; it will not
carry farther than a brickbat, and is not half so certain. And
the great sash they wear in many a fold around their waists
has two or three absurd old horse-pistols in it that are rusty
DANGEROUS ARAB.
MR. GRIMES' BEDOUINS.
483
from eternal disuse — weapons that would hang fire just about
long enough for you to walk out of range, and then burst and
blow the Arab's head off. Exceedingly dangerous these sons
of the desert are.
It used to make my blood run cold to read Win. C. Grimes'
hairbreadth escapes from Bedouins, but I think I could read
them now without a tremor. He never said he was attacked
by Bedouins, I believe, or was ever treated uncivilly, but then
in about every other chapter lie discovered them approaching,
any how, and he had a blood-curdling fashion of working up
the peril ; and of wondering how his relations far away would
feel could they see their poor wandering boy, with his weary
feet and his dim eyes, in such fearful danger ; and of thinking
for the last time of the old homestead, and the dear old church,
and the cow, and those things ; and of finally straightening his
GRIMES ON THE WAR PATH.
form to its utmost height in the saddle, drawing his trusty
revolver, and then dashing the spurs into " Mohammed " and
sweeping down upon the ferocious enemy determined to sell
his life as dearly as possible. True the Bedouins never did
any thing to him when he arrived, and never had any intention
of doing any thing to him in the first place, and wondered
484 MEMORIES OF JOSHUA.
what in the mischief he was making all that to-do about ; but
still I could not divest myself of the idea, somehow, that a
frightful peril had been escaped through that man's dare-devil
bravery, and so I never could read about Win. 0. Grimes'
Bedouins and sleep comfortably afterward. But I believe the
Bedouins to be a fraud, now. I have seen the monster, and I
can outrun him. I shall never be afraid of his daring to stand
behind his own gun and discharge it.
About fifteen hundred years before Christ, this camp-ground
of ours by the Waters of Merom was the scene of one of
Joshua's exterminating battles. Jabin, King of Ilazor, (up
yonder above Dan,) called all the shieks about him together,
with their hosts, to make ready for Israel's terrible General
who was approaching.
" And when all these Kings were met together, they came and pitched together
by the Waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.
" And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as
the sand that is upon the sea-shore for multitude," etc.
But Joshua fell upon them and utterly destroyed them, root
and branch. That was his usual policy in war. He never left
any chance for newspaper controversies about who won the
battle. He made this valley, so quiet now, a reeking
slaughter-pen.
Somewhere in this part of the country — I do not know ex
actly where — Israel fought another bloody battle a hundred
years later. Deborah, the prophetess, told Barak to take ten
thousand men and sally forth against another King Jabin who
had been doing something. Barak came down from Mount
Tabor, twenty or twenty-five miles from here, and gave battle
to Jabin's forces, who were in command of Sisera. Barak won
the fight, and while he was making the victory complete by
the usual method of exterminating the remnant of the defeated
host, Sisera fled away on foot, and when he was nearly ex
hausted by fatigue and thirst, one Jael, a wroman he seems to
have been acquainted with, invited him to come into her tent
.and rest himself. The weary soldier acceded readily enough,
FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY. 485
and Jael put him to bed. He said he was very thirsty, and
asked his generous preserver to get him a cup of water. She
brought him some milk, and he drank of it gratefully and lay
down again, to forget in pleasant dreams his lost battle and
his humbled pride. Presently when he was asleep she came
softly in with a hammer and drove a hideous tent-pen down
through his brain !
" For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died." Such is
the touching language of the Bible. " The Song of Deborah
and Barak " praises Jael for the memorable service she had
rendered, in an exultant strain :
'• Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall
she be above women in the tent.
"He asked for water, and she. gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a
lordly dish.
" She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer ;
and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head when she had
pierced and stricken through his temples.
"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down : at her feet he bowed, he fell:
where he bowed, there he fell down dead."
Stirring scenes like these occur in this valley no more.
There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent —
not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three
small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent
habitation. One may ride ten miles, hereabouts, and not see
ten human beings.
To this region one of the prophecies is applied :
I will bring the land into desolation ; and your enemies which dwell therein
shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and I will
draw out a sword after you ; and your land shall be desolate and your cities
waste." t
No man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say
the prophecy has not been fulfilled.
In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs
the phrase " all these kings." It attracted my attention in a
moment, because it carries to my mind such a vastly different
486 BEGINNING TO UNLEARN.
significance from what it always did at home. I can see easily
enough that if I wish to profit by this tour and come to a cor
rect understanding of the matters of interest connected with
it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many
things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I
must begin a system of reduction. Like my grapes which the
spies bore out of the Promised Land, I have got every thing in
Palestine on too large a scale. Some of my ideas were wild
enough. The word Palestine always brought to my mind a
vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States.
I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was
because I could not conceive of a small country having so
large a history. I think I was a little surprised to find that
the grand Sultan of Turkey was a man of only ordinary size.
I must try to reduce my ideas of Palestine to a more reason
able shape. One gets large impressions in boyhood, some
times, which he has to fight against all his life. " All these
kings." When I used to read that in Sunday School, it sug
gested to me the several kings of such countries as England,
France, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., arrayed in splendid
robes ablaze with jewels, marching in grave procession, with
sceptres of gold in their hands and flashing crowns upon their
heads. But here in Ain Mellahah, after coming through
Syria, and after giving serious study to the character and cus
toms of the country, the phrase " all these kings " loses its
grandeur. It suggests only a parcel of petty chiefs — ill-clad
and ill-conditioned savages much like our Indians, who lived
in full sight of each other and whose " kingdoms " were large
when they were five miles square and contained two thousand
souls. The combined monarchies of the thirty " kings " de
stroyed by Joshua on one of his famous campaigns, only cov
ered an area about equal to four of our counties of ordinary
size. The poor old sheik we saw at Cesarea Philippi with his
ragged band of a hundred followers, would have been called a
" king " in those ancient times.
It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country,
the grass ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enrich-
DESOLATION OF THE LAND. 487
fng the air with their fragrance, and the birds singing in the
trees. But alas, there is no dew here, nor flowers, nor birds,
nor trees. There is a plain and an unshaded lake, and beyond
them some barren mountains. The tents are tumbling, the
Arabs are quarreling like dogs and cats, as usual, the camp
ground is strewn with packages and bundles, the labor of
packing them upon the backs of the mules is progressing with
great activity, the horses are saddled, the umbrellas are out,
and in ten minutes we shall mount and the long procession
will move again. The white city of the Mellahah, resurrected
for a moment out of the dead centuries, will have disappeared
again and left no sign.
CHAPTER XLVII.
"TTT^E traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil
V V is ricn enough, but is given over wholly to weeds — a
silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three persons
—Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt like the
" tow-linen " shirts which used to form the only summer gar
ment of little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds
they were, and they charmed their flocks with the traditional
shepherd's pipe — a reed instrument that made music as ex
quisitely infernal as these same Arabs create when they sing.
In their pipes lingered no echo of the wonderful music the
shepherd forefathers heard in the Plains of Bethlehem what
time the angels sang " Peace on earth, good will to men."
Part of the ground we came over was not ground at all, but
rocks — cream-colored rocks, worn smooth, as if by water ; with
seldom an edge or a corner on them, but scooped out, honey
combed, bored out with eye-holes, and thus wrought into all
manner of quaint shapes, among which the uncouth imitation
of skulls was frequent. Over this part of the route were occa
sional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian Way,
whose paving-stones still clung to their places with Roman
tenacity.
Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desola
tion, glided in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned
themselves. Where prosperity has reigned, and fallen ; where
glory has flamed, and gone out ; where beauty has dwelt, and
passed away ; where gladness was, and sorrow is ; where the
pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its high
JACK'S ADVENTURE.
489
places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human
vanity. His coat is the color of ashes : and ashes are the
symbol of hopes that have perished, of aspirations that came
to nought, of loves that are buried. If he could speak, he
would say, Build temples : I will lord it in their ruins ; build
palaces : I will inhabit them ; erect empires : I will inherit
HOUSE OF ANCIENT POMP.
them ; bury your beautiful : I will watch the worms at their
work ; and you, who stand here and moralize over me : I will
crawl over your corpse at the last.
A few ants were in this desert place, but merely to spend
the summer. They brought their provisions from Ain Mel-
laliali — eleven miles.
Jack is not very well to-day, it is easy to see ; but boy as he
is, he is too much of a man to speak of it. He exposed him
self to the sun too much yesterday, but since it came of his
earnest desire to learn, and to make this journey as useful as
the opportunities will allow, no one seeks to discourage him
by fault-finding. We missed him an hour from the camp, and
then found him some distance away, by the edge of a brook,
490
JACK'S ADVENTURE.
and with no umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun. If
he had been used to going without his umbrella, it would have
been well enough, of course ; but he was not. He was just in
the act of throwing a
clod at a mud-turtle
which was sunning it
self on a small log in
the brook. We said :
"Don't do that, Jack.
"What do you want to
harm him for? What
has he done?"
" Well, then, I won't
kill him, but I ought to,
because he is a fraud."
We asked him why,
but he said it was no
matter. We asked him
why, once or twice, as
JACK. we walked back to the
camp, but he still said
it was no matter. But late at night, when he was sitting in a
thoughtful mood on the bed, we asked him again and he said :
" Well, it don't matter ; I don't mind it now, but I did not
like it to-day, you know, because / don't tell any thing that
isn't so, and I don't think the Colonel ought to, either. But
he did ; he told us at prayers in the Pilgrims' tent, last night,
and he seemed , as if he was reading it out of the Bible, too,
about this country flowing with milk and honey, and about the
voice of the turtle being heard in the land. I thought that
was drawing it a little strong, about the turtles, any how, but
I asked Mr. Church if it was so, and he said it was, and what
Mr. Church tells me, I believe. But I sat there and watched
that turtle nearly an hour to-day, and I almost burned up in
the sun ; but I never heard him sing. I believe I sweated a
double handful of sweat — I know I did — because it got in my
eyes, and it was running down over my nose all the time ; and
JACK'S ADVENTURE.
491
you know my pants are tighter than any body else's — Paris
foolishness — and the buckskin seat of them got wet with sweat,
and then got dry again and began to draw up and pinch and
tear loose — it was awful — but I never heard him sing. Fi
nally I said, This is a fraud — that is what it is, it is a fraud —
and if I had had any sense I might have known a cursed mud-
turtle couldn't sing. And then I said, I don't wish to be hard
on this fellow, and I will just give him ten minutes to com
mence ; ten minutes — and then if he don't, down goes his
building. But he didn't commence, you know. I had staid
A DISAPPOINTED AUDIENCE.
there all that time, thinking may be he might, pretty soon,
because he kept on raising his head up and letting it down,
and drawing the skin over his eyes for a minute and then
opening them out again, as if he was trying to study up some
thing to sing, but just as the ten minutes were up and I was
all beat out and blistered, he laid his blamed head down on a
knot and went fast asleep."
" It was a little hard, after you had waited so long."
" I should think so. I said, "Well, if you won't sing, you
492 JOSEPH'S PIT.
shan't sleep, any way ; and if you fellows had let me alone I
would have made him shin out of Galilee quicker than any
turtle ever did yet. But it isn't any matter now — let it go.
The skin is all off the back of my neck."
About ten in the morning we halted at Joseph's Pit. This
is a ruined Khan of the Middle Ages, in one of whose side
courts is a great walled and arched pit with water in it, and
this pit, one tradition says, is the one Joseph's brethren cast
him into. A more authentic tradition, aided by the geography
of the country, places the pit in Dothan, some two days' jour
ney from here. However, since there are many who believe
in this present pit as the true one, it has its interest.
It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in
a book which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the
Bible ; but it is certain that not many things within its lids
may take rank above the exquisite story of Joseph. Who
taught those ancient writers their simplicity of language, their
felicity of expression, their pathos, and above all, their faculty
of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of the reader and
making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell itself?
Shakspeare is always present when one reads his book ; Ma-
caulay is present when we follow the march of his stately sen
tences ; but the Old Testament writers are hidden from view.
If the pit I have been speaking of is the right one, a scene
transpired there, long ages ago, which is familiar to us all in
pictures. The sons of Jacob had been pasturing their flocks
near there. Their father grew uneasy at their long absence,
and sent Joseph, his favorite, to see if any thing had gone
wrong with them. He traveled six or seven days' journey ; he
was only seventeen years old, and, boy like, he toiled through
that long stretch of the vilest, rockiest, dustiest country in
Asia, arrayed in the pride of his heart, his beautiful claw
hammer coat of many colors. Joseph was the favorite, and
that was one crime in the eyes of his brethren ; he had
dreamed dreams, and 'interpreted them to foreshadow his ele
vation far above all his family in the far future, and that was
another ; he was dressed well and had doubtless displayed the
JOSEPH'S MAGNANIMITY AND ESAU'S. 493
harmless vanity of youth in keeping the fact prominently be
fore his brothers. These were crimes his elders fretted over
among themselves and proposed to punish when the opportu
nity should oifer. When they saw him coming up from the
Sea of Galilee, they recognized him and were glad. They said,
" Lo, here is this dreamer — let us kill him." But Reuben
pleaded for his life, and they spared it. But they seized the
boy, and stripped the hated coat from his back and pushed
him into the pit. They intended to let him die there, but
Reuben intended to liberate him secretly. However, while
Reuben was away for a little while, the brethren sold Joseph
to some Ishmaelitish merchants who were journeying towards
Egypt. Such is the history of the pit. And the self-same pit
is there in that place, even to this day ; and there it will re
main until the next detachment of image-breakers and tomb-
desecraters arrives from the Quaker City excursion, and they
will infallibly dig it up and carry it away with them. For
behold in them is no reverence for the solemn monuments of
the past, and whithersoever they go they destroy and spare
not.
Joseph became rich, distinguished, powerful — as the Bible
expresses it, " lord over all the land of Egypt." Joseph was
the real king, the strength, the brain of the monarchy, though
Pharaoh held the title. Joseph is one of the truly great men
of the Old Testament. And he was the noblest and the man
liest, save Esau. Why shall we not say a good word for the
princely Bedouin? The only crime that can be brought
against him is that he was unfortunate. Why must every body
praise Joseph's great-hearted generosity to his cruel brethren,
without stint of fervent language, and fling only a reluctant
bone of praise to Esau for his still sublimer generosity to the
brother who had wronged him ? Jacob took advantage of
Esau's consuming hunger to rob him of his birthright and the
great honor and consideration that belonged to the position ;
by treachery and falsehood he robbed him of his father's bless
ing ; he made of him a stranger in his home, and a wanderer.
Yet after twenty years had passed away and Jacob met Esau
494 THE SACRED LAKE OF GENESSARET.
and fell at his feet quaking with fear and begging piteously to
be spared the punishment he knew he deserved, what did that
magnificent savage do ? He fell upon his neck and embraced
him ! "When Jacob — who was incapable of comprehending
nobility of character — still doubting, still fearing, insisted
upon " finding grace with my lord " by the bribe of a present
of cattle, what did the gorgeous son of the desert say ?
"Nay, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto
thyself!"
Esau found Jacob rich, beloved by wives and children, and
traveling in state, with servants, herds of cattle and trains of
camels — but he himself was still the uncourted outcast this
brother had made him. After thirteen years of romantic mys
tery, the brethren who had wronged Joseph, came, strangers
in a strange land, hungry and humble, to buy " a little food ;"
and being summoned to a palace, charged with crime, they
beheld in its owner their wronged brother ; they were trem
bling beggars — he, the lord of a mighty empire ! What Jo
seph that ever lived would have thrown away such a chance
to " show off?" Who stands first — outcast Esau forgiving
Jacob in prosperity, or Joseph on a king's throne forgiving the
ragged tremblers whose happy rascality placed him there ?
Just before we came to Joseph's Pit, we had " raised " a hill,
and there, a few miles before us, with not a tree or a shrub to
interrupt the view, lay a vision which millions of worshipers
in the far lands of the earth would give half their possessions
to see — the sacred Sea of Galilee !
Therefore we tarried only a short time at the pit. We
rested the horses and ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the
blessed shade of the ancient buildings. We were out of water,
but the two or three scowling Arabs, with their long guns,
who were idling about the place, said they had none and that
there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a little
brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made
sacred by their ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing
to see Christian dogs drink from it. But Ferguson tied rags
and handkerchiefs together till he made a rope long enough to
PILGRIM ENTHUSIASM.
495
lower a vessel to the bottom, and we drank and then rode on ;
and in a short time we dismounted on those shores which the
feet of the Saviour have made holy ground.
At noon we took a swim in the Sea of Galilee — a blessed
privilege in this roasting climate — and then lunched under a
neglected old fig-tree at the fountain they call Ain-et-Tin, a
hundred yards from ruined Capernaum. Every rivulet that
gurgles out of the rocks and sands of this part of the world is
dubbed with the title of " fountain," and people familiar with
the Hudson, the great lakes and the Mississippi fall into trans
ports of admiration over them, and exhaust their powers of
composition in
writing their
praises. If all
the poetry and
nonsense that
have been dis
charged upon
the ' fountains
and the bland
scenery of this
region were
collected in a
book, it would
make a most
valuable vol
ume to burn.
During
luncheon, the
pilgrim enthu
siasts of our
party, who had
been so light-
hearted and
happy ever since they touched holy ground that they did little
but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so anx
ious were they to " take shipping " and sail in very person
FIG TREE.
496 PILGRIM ENTHUSIASM.
upon the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles.
Their anxiety grew and their excitement augmented with
every fleeting moment, until my fears were aroused and I be
gan to have misgivings that in their present condition they
might break recklessly loose from all considerations of pru
dence and buy a whole fleet of ships to sail in instead of hiring
a single one for an hour, as quiet folk are wont to do. I trem
bled to think of the ruined purses this day's performances
might result in. I could not help reflecting bodingly upon the
intemperate zeal with which middle-aged men are apt to sur
feit themselves upon a seductive folly wrhich they have tasted
for the first time. And yet I did not feel that I had a right
to be surprised at the state of things which was giving me so
much concern. These men had been taught from infancy to
revere, almost to worship, the holy places whereon their happy
eyes were resting now. For many and many a year this very
picture had visited their thoughts by day and floated through
their dreams by night. To stand before it in the flesh — to see
it as they saw it now — to sail upon the hallowed sea, and kiss
the holy soil that compassed it about : these were aspirations
they had cherished while a generation dragged its lagging sea
sons by and left its furrows in their faces and its frosts upon
their hair. To look upon this picture, and sail upon this sea,
they had forsaken home and its idols and journeyed thousands
and thousands of miles, in weariness and tribulation. What
wonder that the sordid lights of work-day prudence should
pale before the glory of a hope like theirs in the full splendor
of its fruition ? Let them squander millions ! I said — who
speaks of money at a time like this ?
In this frame of mind I followed, as fast as I could, the
eager footsteps of the pilgrims, and stood upon the shore of the
lake, and swelled, with hat and voice, the frantic hail they
sent after the " ship " that was speeding by. It was a success.
The toilers of the sea ran in and beached their barque. Joy
sat upon every countenance.
" How much ? — ask him how much, Ferguson ! — how much
to take us all — eight of us, and you- — to Bethsaida, yonder,
WHY WE DID NOT SAIL ON GALILEE.
497
and to the mouth of Jordan, and to the place where the swine
ran down into the sea — quick ! — and we want to coast around
every where — every where ! — all day long ! — / could sail a year
in these waters ! — and tell him we'll stop at Magdala and fin
ish at Tiberias ! — ask him how much ? — any thing — any thing
whatever ! — tell him we don't care what the expense is !" [I
said to myself, I knew how it would be.]
Ferguson — (interpreting) — " He says two Napoleons — eight
dollars."
One or two countenances fell. Then a pause.
" Too much ! — we'll give him one !"
I never shall know how it was — I shudder yet when I think
how the place is given to miracles — but in a single instant of
time, as it seemed to me, that ship was twenty paces from the
shore, and speeding away like a frightened thing ! Eight crest
fallen creatures stood upon the shore, and O, to think of it !
this — this — after all that overmastering ecstacy ! Oh, shame
ful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting ! It was
32
498 WHY WE DID NOT SAIL ON GALILEE.
too much like " Ho ! let me at him !" followed by a prudent
" Two of you hold him — one can hold me !"
Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the
camp. The two Napoleons were offered — more if necessary —
and pilgrims and dragoman shouted themselves hoarse with
pleadings to the retreating boatmen to come back. But they
sailed serenely away and paid no further heed to pilgrims who
had dreamed all their lives of some day skimming over the
sacred waters of Galilee and listening to its hallowed story in
the whisperings of its waves, and had journeyed countless
leagues to do it, and — and then concluded that the fare was
too high. Impertinent Mohammedan Arabs, to think such
things of gentlemen of another faith !
Well, there was nothing to do but just submit and forego
the privilege of voyaging on Genessaret, after coming half
around the globe to taste that pleasure. There was a time,
when the Saviour taught here, that boats were plenty among
the fishermen of the coasts — but boats and fishermen both are
gone, now ; and old Josephus had a fleet of men-of-war in
these waters eighteen centuries ago — a hundred and thirty
bold canoes — but they, also, have passed away and left no sign.
They battle here no more by sea, and the commercial marine
of Galilee numbers only two small ships, just of a pattern
with the little skiffs the disciples knew. One was lost to us
for good — the other was miles away and far out of hail. So
we mounted the horses and rode grimly on toward Magdala,
cantering along in the edge of the water for want of the means
of passing over it
How the pilgrims abused each other ! Each said it was the
other's fault, and each in turn denied it. Xo word was spoken
by the sinners — even the mildest sarcasm might have been
dangerous at such a time. Sinners that have been kept down
and had examples held up to them, and suffered frequent lec
tures, and been so put upon in a moral way and in the matter
of going slow and being serious and bottling up slang, and so
crowded in regard to the matter of being proper and always
and forever behaving, that their lives have become a burden
ABOUT CAPERNAUM. 499
to them, would not lag behind pilgrims at such a time as this,
and wink furtively, and be joyful, and commit other such
crimes — because it would not occur to them to do it. Otherwise
they would. But they did do it, though — and it did them a
world of good to hear the pilgrims abuse each other, too. We
took an unworthy satisfaction in seeing them fall out, now and
then, because it showed that they were only poor human peo
ple like us, after all.
So we all rode down to Magdala, while the gnashing of
teeth waxed and waned by turns, and harsh words troubled
the holy calm of Galilee.
Lest any man think I mean to be ill-natured when I talk
about our pilgrims as I have been talking, I wish to say in all
sincerity that I do not. I would not listen to lectures from
men I did not like and could not respect ; and none of these
can say I ever took their lectures unkindly, or was restive un
der the infliction, or failed to try to profit by what they said to
me. They are better men than I am ; I can say that honest
ly ; they are good friends of mine, too — and besides, if they
did not wish to be stirred up occasionally in print, why in the
mischief did they travel with me? They knew me. They
knew my liberal way — that I like to give and take — when it
is for me to give and other people to take. When one of
them threatened to leave me in Damascus when I had the
cholera, he had no real idea of doing it — I know his pas
sionate nature and the good impulses that underlie it. And
did I not overhear Church, another pilgrim*, say he did not
care who went or who staid, he would stand by me till I
walked out of Damascus on my own feet or was carried out in
a coffin, if it was a year ? And do I not include Church every
time I abuse the pilgrims — and would I be likely to speak ill-
naturedly of him ? I wish to stir them up and make them
healthy ; that is all.
We had left Capernaum behind us. It was only a shapeless
ruin. It bore no semblance to a town, and had nothing about
it to suggest that it had ever been a town. But all desolate
and unpeopled as it was, it was illustrious ground. From it
500 ABOUT CAPERNAUM.
sprang that tree of Christianity whose broad arms overshadow
so many distant lands to-day. After Christ was tempted of
the devil in the desert, he came here and began his teachings ;
and during the three or four years he lived afterward, this
place was his home almost altogether. He began to heal the
sick, and his fame soon spread so widely that sufferers came
from Syria and beyond Jordan, and even from Jerusalem, sev
eral days' journey away, to be cured of their diseases. Here
he healed the centurion's servant and Peter's mother-in-law,
and multitudes of the lame and the blind and persons pos
sessed of devils ; and here, also, he raised Jairus's daughter
from the dead. He went into a ship with his disciples, and
when they roused him from sleep in the midst of a storm, he
quieted the winds and lulled the troubled sea to rest with his
voice. He passed over to the other side, a few miles away,
and relieved two men of devils, which passed into some swine.
After his return he called Matthew from the receipt of cus
toms, performed some cures, and created scandal by eating
with publicans and sinners. Then he went healing and teach
ing through Galilee, and even journeyed to Tyre and Sidon.
He chose the twelve disciples, and sent them abroad to preach
the new gospel. He worked miracles in Bethsaida and Cho-
razin — villages two or three miles from Capernaum. It was
near one of them that the miraculous draft of fishes is sup
posed to have been taken, and it was in the desert places near
the other that he fed the thousands by the miracles of the
loaves and fishes. He curbed them both, and Capernaum also,
for not repenting, after all the great works he had done in
their midst, and prophesied against them. They are all in
ruins, now — which is gratifying to the pilgrims, for, as usual,
they fit the eternal words of gods to the evanescent things of
this earth ; Christ, it is more probable, referred to the people,
not their shabby villages of wigwams : he said it would be sad
for them at " the day of judgment " — and what business have
mud-hovels at the Day of Judgment ? it would not affect the
prophecy in the least — it would neither prove it or disprove it
— if these towns were splendid cities now instead of the almost
501
vanished ruins they are. Christ visited Magdala, which is near
by Capernaum, and he also visited Cesarea Philippi. He
went up to his old home at Nazareth, and saw his brothers
Joses, and Judas, and James, and Simon — those persons who,
being own brothers to Jesus Christ, one would expect to hear
mentioned sometimes, yet who ever saw their names in a
newspaper or heard them from a pulpit ? Who ever inquires
what manner of youths they were ; and whether they slept
with Jesus, played with him and romped about him ; quarreled
with him concerning toys and trifles ; struck him in anger, not
suspecting wrhat he was ? Who ever wonders what they
thought when they saw him come back to Nazareth a celeb
rity, and looked long at his unfamiliar face to make sure, and
then said, " It is Jesus ?" Who wonders what passed in their
minds when they saw this brother, (who was only a brother to
them, however much he might be to others a mysterious stran
ger who was a god and had stood face to face with God above
the clouds,) doing strange miracles with crowds of astonished
people for witnesses ? Who wonders if the brothers of Jesus
asked him to come home with them, and said his mother and
his sisters were grieved at his long absence, and would be wild
with delight to see his face again ? Who ever gives a thought
to the sisters of Jesus at all ? — yet he had sisters ; and memo
ries of them must have stolen into his mind often when he was
ill-treated among strangers ; when he was homeless and said
he had not where to lay his head ; when all deserted him, even
Peter, and he stood alone among his enemies.
Christ did few miracles in Nazareth, and staid but a little
while. The people said, " Tliis the Son of God ! Why, his
father is nothing but a carpenter. We know the family. We
see them every day. Are not his brothers named so and so,
and his sisters so and so, and is not his mother the person they
call Mary ? This is absurd." He did not curse his home, but
he shook its dust from his feet and went away.
Capernaum lies close to the edge of the little sea, in a small
plain some five miles long and a mile or two wide, which is
mildly adorned with oleanders which look all the better con-
502 THE CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY.
trasted with the bald hills and the howling deserts which sur
round them, but they are not as deliriously beautiful as the
books paint them. If one be calm and resolute he can look
upon their comeliness and live.
One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen un
der our observation is the exceedingly small portion of the
earth from which sprang the now flourishing plant of Chris
tianity. The longest journey our Saviour ever performed was
from here to Jerusalem — about one hundred to one hundred
and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to Sidon
— say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide
apart — as American appreciation of distances would naturally
suggest — the places made most particularly celebrated by the
presence of Christ are nearly all right here in full view, and
within cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving out two or three
short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his
gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no larger
than an ordinary county in the United States. It is as much
as I can do to comprehend this stupefying fact. How it wears
a man out to have to read up a hundred pages of history every
two or three miles — for verily the celebrated localities of Pal
estine occur that close together. How wearily, how bewilder-
ingly they swarm about your path !
In due time we reached the ancient village of Magdala.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
MAGDALA is not a beautiful place. It is thoroughly
Syrian, and that is to say that it is thoroughly ugly,
and cramped, squalid, uncomfortable, and filthy — just the style
of cities that have adorned the country since Adam's time, as
all writers have labored hard to prove, and have succeeded.
The streets of Magdala are any where from three to six feet
wide, and reeking with uncleanliness. The houses are from
five to seven feet high, and all built upon one arbitrary plan —
the ungraceful form of a dry-goods box. The sides are daubed
with a smooth white plaster, and tastefully frescoed aloft and
alow with disks of camel-dung placed there to dry. This gives
the edifice the romantic appearance of having been riddled
with cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very warlike aspect.
When the artist has arranged his materials with an eye to just
proportion — the small and the large flakes in alternate rows,
and separated by carefully-considered intervals — I know of
nothing more cheerful to look upon than a spirited Syrian
fresco. The flat, plastered roof is garnished by picturesque
stacks of fresco materials, which, having become thoroughly
dried and cured, are placed there where it will be convenient.
It is used for fuel. There is no timber of any consequence in
Palestine — none at all to wraste upon fires — and neither are
there any mines of coal. If my description has been intelli
gible, you will perceive, now, that a square, flat-roofed hovel,
neatly frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and tur-
reted with dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature
that is exceedingly festive and picturesque, especially if one is
504: GRAND RECEPTION OF THE PILGRIMS.
careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever, about the
premises, there is room for a cat to sit. There are no windows
to a Syrian hut, and 110 chimneys. When I used to read that
they let a bed-ridden man down through the roof of a house
in Capernaum to get him into the presence of the Saviour, I
generally had a three-story brick in my mind, and marveled
that they
did not
break
his neck
with the
strange
experi
ment. I
p e rceive
n o w ,
however,
that they
in i g h t
have ta
ken him
by the heels and thrown him clear over the house without dis
commoding him very much. Palestine is not changed any
since those days, in manners, customs, architecture, or people.
As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible. But the
ring of the horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they
all came trooping out — old men and old women, boys and
girls, the blind, the crazy, and the crippled, all in ragged,
soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject beggars by nature,
instinct and education. How the vermin -tortured vagabonds
did swarm ! How they showed their scars and sores, and pit-
eously pointed to their maimed and crooked limbs, and begged
with their pleading eyes for charity ! We had invoked a spirit
we could not lay. They hung to the horses's tails, clung to
their manes and the stirrups, closed in on every side in scorn
of dangerous hoofs — and out of their infidel throats, with one
accord, burst an agonizing and most infernal chorus : " HOW-
SYRIAN HOUSE.
OLD TIBERIAS. 505
ajji, bucksheesli ! liowajji, bucksheesh ! howajji, bucksheesh !
bucksheesh ! bucksheesli !" I never was in a storm like that
before.
As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and
brown, buxom girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins,
we' filed through the town and by many an exquisite fresco,
till we came to a bramble-infested inclosure and a Roman-
looking ruin which had been the veritable dwelling of St. Mary
Magdalene, the friend and follower of Jesus. The guide be
lieved it, and so did I. I could not well do otherwise, with
the house right there before my eyes as plain as day. The
pilgrims took down portions of the front wall for specimens,
as is their honored custom, and then we departed.
We are camped in this place, now, just within the city walls
of Tiberias. We went into the town before nightfall and
looked at its people — we cared nothing about its houses. Its
people are best examined at a distance. They are particularly
uncomely Jews, Arabs, and negroes. Squalor and poverty are
the pride of Tiberias. The young women wear their dower
strung upon a strong wire that curves downward from the top
of the head to the jaw — Turkish silver coins which they have
raked together or inherited. Most of these maidens were not
wealthy, but some few had been very kindly dealt with by for
tune. I saw heiresses there worth, in their own right — worth,
well, I suppose I might venture to say, as much as nine dollars
and a half. But such cases are rare. When you come across
one of these, she naturally puts on airs. She will not ask for
bucksheesh. She will not even permit of undue familiarity.
She assumes a crushing dignity and goes on serenely prac
ticing with her fine-tooth comb and quoting poetry just the
same as if you were not present at all. Some people can not
stand prosperity.
They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-
snatchers, with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl
dangling down in front of each ear, are the old, familiar, self-
righteous Pharisees we read of in the Scriptures. Yerily, they
look it. Judging merely by their general style, and without
506
OLD TIBERIAS.
other evidence, one might easily suspect that self-righteousness
was their specialty.
From various authorities I have culled information concern
ing Tiberias. It was built by Herod Antipas, the murderer
of John the Baptist, and named after the Emperor Tiberius.
It is believed that it stands upon the site of what must have
been, ages ago, a city of considerable architectural pretensions,
judging by the fine porphyry pillars that are scattered through
Tiberias and down the lake shore southward. These were
fluted, once, and yet, although the stone is about as hard as
iron, the flutings are almost worn away. These pillars are
TIBERIAS, AND SEA OF UALILEE.
small, and doubtless the edifices they adorned were distin
guished more for elegance than grandeur. This modern town
— Tiberias — is only mentioned in the New Testament ; never
in the Old.
The Sanhedrim met here last, and for three hundred years
CONTRASTED SCENERY. 507
Tiberias was the metropolis of the Jews in Palestine. It is
one of the four holy cities of the Israelites, and is to them what
Mecca is to the Mohammedan and Jerusalem to the Christian.
It has been the abiding place of many learned and famous
Jewish rabbins. They lie buried here, and near them lie also
twenty-five thousand of their faith who traveled far to be near
them while they lived and lie with them when they died. The
great Rabbi Ben Israel spent three years here in the early part
of the third century. He is dead, now.
The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake
Tahoe* by a good deal — it is just about two-thirds as large.
And when we come to speak of beauty, this sea is no more to
be compared to Tahoe than a meridian of longitude is to a
rainbow. The dim waters of this pool can not suggest the lim
pid brilliancy of Tahoe ; these low, shaven, yellow hillocks of
rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, can not suggest the
grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed
and chasmed fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to
grow small and smaller as they climb, till one might fancy
them reduced to weeds and shrubs far upward, wThere they join
the everlasting snows. Silence and solitude brood over Tahoe ;
and silence and solitude brood also over this lake of Genessa-
ret. But the solitude of the one is as cheerful and fascinating
as the solitude of the other is dismal and repellant.
In the early morning one watches the silent battle of dawn
and darkness upon the waters of Tahoe with a placid interest;
but when the shadows sulk away and one by one the hidden
beauties of the shore unfold themselves in the full splendor of
noon ; when the still surface is belted like a rainbow with broad
bars of blue and green and white, half the distance from cir
cumference to centre ; when, in the lazy summer afternoon, he
lies in a boat, far cut to where the dead blue of the deep water
begins, and smokes the pipe of peace and idly winks at the
* I measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far more familiar with it
than with any other, and partly because I have such a high admiration for it and
such a world of pleasant recollections of it, that it is very nearly impossible for mo
to speak of lakes and not mention it.
508 CONTRASTED SCENERY.
distant crags and patches of snow from under his cap-brim ;
when the boat drifts shoreward to the white water, and he lolls
over the gunwale and gazes by the hour down through the
crystal depths and notes the colors of the pebbles and reviews
the finny armies gliding in procession a hundred feet below ;
when at night he sees moon and stars, mountain ridges feath
ered with pines, jutting white capes, bold promontories, grand
sweeps of rugged scenery topped with bald, glimmering peaks,
all magnificently pictured in the polished mirror of the lake,
in richest, softest detail, the tranquil interest that was born
with the morning deepens and deepens, by sure degrees, till it
culminates at last in resistless fascination !
It is solitude, for birds and squirrels on the shore and fishes
in the water are all the creatures that are near to make it oth
erwise, but it is not the sort of solitude to make one dreary.
Come to Galilee for that. If these unpeopled deserts, these
rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never, never do shake
the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into
vague perspective ; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum ; this
stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal
plumes of palms ; yonder desolate declivity where the swine
of the miracle ran down into the sea, and doubtless thought it
was better to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the
bargain than have to live longer in such a place ; this cloud
less, blistering sky ; this solemn, sailless, tintless lake, reposing
within its rhn of yellow hills and low, steep banks, and look
ing just as expressionless and unpoetical (when we leave its
sublime history out of the question,) as any metropolitan res
ervoir in Christendom — if these things are not food for rock
me to sleep, mother, none exist, I think.
But I should not offer the evidence for the prosecution and
leave the defense unheard. Wm. C. Grimes deposes as fol
lows : —
" We had taken ship to go over to the other side. The sea was not more than
six miles wide. Of the beauty of the scene, however, I can not say enough, nor
can I imagine where those travelers carried their eyes who have described the
scenery of the lake as tame or uninteresting. The first great characteristic of it is
GRIMES'S OPINION. 509
the deep basin in which it lies. This is from three to four hundred feet deep on all
sides except at the lower end, and the sharp slope of the banks, which are all of
the richest green, is broken arid diversified by the wiidys and water-courses which
work their way down through the sides of the basin, forming dark chasms or light
sunny valleys. Near Tiberias these banks are rocky, and ancient sepulchres open
in them, with their doors toward the water. They selected grand spots, as did the
Egyptians of old, for burial places, as if they designed that when the voice of God
should reach the sleepers, they should walk forth and open their eyes on scenes of
glorious beauty. On the east, the wild and desolate mountains contrast finely with
the deep blue lake; and toward the north, sublime and majestic, Hermon looks
down on the sea, lifting his white crown to heaven with the pride of a hill that has
seen the departing footsteps of a hundred generations. On the north-east shore of
the sea was a single tree, and this is the only tree of any size visible from the wa
ter of the lake, except a few lonely palms in the city of Tiberias, and by its soli
tary position attracts more attention than would a forest. The whole appearance
of the scene is precisely what we would expect and desire the scenery of Genes-
saret to be, grand beauty, but quiet calm. The very mountains are calm."
It is an ingeniously written description, and well calculated
to deceive. But if the paint and the ribbons and the flowers
be stripped from it, a skeleton will be found beneath.
So stripped, there remains a lake six miles wide and neutral
in color ; with steep green banks, unrelieved by shrubbery ; at
one end bare, unsightly rocks, with (almost invisible) holes in
them ,of no consequence to the picture ; eastward, " wild and
desolate mountains ;" (low, desolate hills, he should have
said ;) in the north, a mountain called Hermon, with snow on
it ; peculiarity of the picture, " calmness ;" its prominent fea
ture, one tree.
No ingenuity could make such a picture beautiful — to one's
actual vision.
I claim the right to correct misstatements, and have so cor
rected the color of the water in the above recapitulation. The
waters of Genessaret are of an exceedingl}7 mild blue, even
from a high elevation and a distance of five miles. Close at
hand (the witness was sailing on the lake,) it is hardly proper
to call them blue at all, much less "deep" blue. I wish to
state, also, not as a correction, but as matter of opinion, that
Mount Hermon is not a striking or picturesque mountain by
any means, being too near the height of its immediate neigh-
510 C. W. E.'S OPINION.
bors to be so. That is all. I do not object to the witness
dragging a mountain forty-five miles to help the scenery under
consideration, because it is entirely proper to do it, and besides,
the picture needs it.
" C. W. E.," (of " Life in the Holy Land,") deposes as fol
lows : —
" A beautiful sea lies unbosomed among the Galilean hills, in the midst of that
land once possessed by Zebulon and Naphtali, Asher and Dan. The azure of the
sky penetrates the depths of the lake, and the waters are sweet and cool. On the
west, stretch broad fertile plains ; on the north the rocky shores rise step by step
until in the far distance tower the snowy heights of Hermon ; on the east through
a misty veil, are seen the high plains of Perea, which stretch away in rugged
mountains leading the mind by varied paths toward Jerusalem the Holy. Flowers
bloom in this terrestrial paradise, once beautiful and verdant with waving trees;
singing birds enchant the ear ; the turtle-dove soothes with its soft note ; the crest
ed lark sends up its song toward heaven, and the grave and stately stork inspires
the mind with thought, and leads it on to meditation and repose. Life here was
once idyllic, charming; here were once no rich, no poor, no high, no low. It was
a world of ease, simplicity, and beauty; now it is a scene of desolation and
misery."
This is not an ingenious picture. It is the worst I ever saw.
It describes in elaborate detail what it terms a " terrestrial
paradise," and closes with the startling information that this
paradise is " a scene of desolation and misery"
I have given two fair, average specimens of the character of
the testimony offered by the majority of the writers who visit
this region. One says, " Of the beauty of the scene I can not
say enough," and then proceeds to cover up with a woof of
glittering sentences a thing which, when stripped for inspec
tion, proves to be only an unobtrusive basin of water, some
mountainous desolation, and one tree. The other, after a con
scientious effort to build a terrestrial paradise out of the same
materials, with the addition of a " grave and stately stork,"
spoils it all by blundering upon the ghastly truth at the last.
Nearly every book concerning Galilee and its lake describes
the scenery as beautiful. No — not always so straightforward
as that. Sometimes the impression intentionally conveyed is
that it is beautiful, at the same time that the author is careful
DENOMINATIONAL SIGHT-SEEING. 511
not to say that it is, in plain Saxon. But a careful analysis of
these descriptions will show that the materials of which they are
formed are not individually beautiful and can not be wrought
into combinations that are beautiful. The veneration and the
affection which some of these men felt for the scenes they
were speaking of, heated their fancies and biased their judg
ment ; but the pleasant falsities they wrote were full of honest
sincerity, at any rate. Others wrote as they did, because they
feared it would be unpopular to write otherwise. Others were
hypocrites and deliberately meant to deceive. Any of them
would say in a moment, if asked, that it was always right and
always best to tell the truth. They would say that, at any rate,
if they did not perceive the drift of the question.
But why should not the truth be spoken of this region ? Is
the truth harmful ? Has it ever needed to hide its face? God
made the Sea of Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is
it the province of Mr. Grimes to improve upon the work ?
I am sure, from the tenor of books I have read, that many
who have visited this land in years gone by, were Presbyte
rians, and came seeking evidences in support of their particular
creed ; they found a Presbyterian Palestine, and they had al
ready made up their minds to find no other, though possibly
they did not know it, being blinded by their zeal. Others
were Baptists, seeking Baptist evidences and a Baptist Pales
tine. Others were Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, seek
ing evidences indorsing their several creeds, and a Catholic, a
Methodist, an Episcopalian Palestine. Honest as these men's
intentions may have been, they were full of partialities and
prejudices, they entered the country with their verdicts already
prepared, and they could no more write dispassionately and
impartially about it than they could about their own wives
and children. Our pilgrims have brought their verdicts with
them. They have shown it in their conversation ever since
we left Beirout. I can almost tell, in set phrase, what they
will say when they see Tabor, Nazareth, Jericho and Jeru
salem — because I have the books they will u smouch " their ideas
from. These authors write pictures and frame rhapsodies, and
512 THE SACRED SEA BY NIGHT.
lesser men follow and see with the author's eyes instead of
their own, and speak with his tongue. What the pilgrims
said at Cesarea Philippi surprised me with its wisdom. 1
found it afterwards in Robinson. What they said when
Genessaret burst upon their vision, charmed me with its grace.
I find it in Mr. Thompson's "Land and the Book." They
have spoken often, in happily worded language which never
varied, of how they mean to lay their weary heads upon a
stone at Bethel, as Jacob did, and close their dim eyes, and
dream, perchance, of angels descending out of heaven on a
ladder. It was very pretty. But I have recognized the weary
head and the dim eyes, finally. They borrowed the idea — and
the words — and the construction — and the punctuation — from
Grimes. The pilgrims will tell of Palestine, when they get
home, not as it appeared to them, but as it appeared to Thomp
son and Robinson and Grimes — with the tints varied to suit
each pilgrim's creed.
Pilgrims, sinners and Arabs are all abed, now, and the camp
is still. Labor in loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last
few notes, I have been sitting outside the tent for half an hour.
Night is the time to see Galilee. Genessaret under these lus
trous stars, has nothing repulsive about it. Genessaret with
the glittering reflections of the constellations flecking its sur
face, almost makes me regret that I ever saw the rude glare of
the day upon it. Its history and its associations are its chief-
est charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble in
the searching light of the sun. Tlien, we scarcely feel the fet
ters. O«r thoughts wander constantly to the practical con
cerns of life, and refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague
and unreal. But when the day is done, even the most unim-
pressible must yield to the dreamy influences of this tranquil
starlight. The old traditions of the place steal upon his mem
ory and haunt his reveries, and then his fancy clothes all
sights and sounds with the supernatural. In the lapping of
the waves upon the beach, he hears the dip of ghostly oars ;
in the secret noises of the night he hears spirit voices ; in the
soft sweep of the breeze, the rush of invisible wings. Phan-
THE SACRED SEA BY NIGHT. 513
torn ships are on the sea, the dead of twenty centuries come
forth from the tombs, and in the dirges of the night wind the
songs of old forgotten ages find utterance again.
In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad
compass of the heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events ;
meet for the birth of a religion able to save a world ; and
meet for the stately Figure appointed to stand upon its stage
and proclaim its high decrees. But in the sunlight, one says :
Is it for the deeds which were done and the words wThich were
spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen centuries
gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands of
the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the cir
cumference of the huge globe ?
One can comprehend it only when night has hidden all in
congruities and created a theatre proper for so grand a drama.
33
OHAPTEK XLIX.
WE took another swim in the Sea of Galilee at twilight
yesterday, and another at sunrise this morning. We
have not sailed, but three swims are equal to a sail, are they
not ? There were plenty of fish visible in the water, but we
have no outside aids in this pilgrimage but " Tent Life in the
Holy Land," " The Land and the Book," and other literature
of like description — no fishing-tackle. There were no fish to
be had in the village of Tiberias. True, we saw two or three
vagabonds mending their nets, but never trying to catch any
thing with them.
We did not go to the ancient warm baths two miles below
Tiberias. I had no desire in the world to go there. This
seemed a little strange, and prompted me to try to discover
what the cause of this unreasonable indifference was. It turned
out to be simply because Pliny mentions them. I have con
ceived a sort of unwarrantable unfriendliness toward Pliny
and St. Paul, because it seems as if I can never ferret out a
place that I can have to myself. It always and eternally
transpires that St. Paul has been to that place, and Pliny has
" mentioned " it.
In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a
weird apparition marched forth at the head of the procession —
a pirate, I thought, if ever a pirate dwelt upon land. It was
a tall Arab, as swarthy as an Indian ; young — say thirty years
of age. On his head he had closely bound a gorgeous yellow
and red striped silk scarf, whose ends, lavishly fringed with
tassels, hung down between his shoulders and dallied with the
THE APPARITION. 515
wind From his neck to his knees, in ample folds, a robe
swept down that was a very star-spangled banner of curved
and sinuous bars of black and white. Out of his back, some
where, apparently, the long stem of a chibouk projected, and
reached far above his right shoulder. Athwart his back, diag
onally, and extending high above his left shoulder, was an
Arab gun of Saladin's time, that was splendid with silver pla
ting from stock clear up to the end of its measureless stretch
of barrel. About his waist was bound many and many a yard
of elaborately figured but sadly tarnished stuff that came from
sumptuous Persia, and among the baggy folds in front the sun
beams glinted from a formidable battery of old brass-mounted
horse-pistols and the gilded hilts of blood-thirsty knives.
There were holsters for more pistols appended to the wonder
ful stack of long-haired goat-skins and Persian carpets, which
the man had been taught to regard in the light of a saddle ;
and down among the pendulous rank of vast tassels that
swung from that saddle, and clanging against the iron shovel
of a stirrup that propped the warrior's knees up toward his
chin, was a crooked, silver-clad scimetar of such awful dimen
sions and such implacable expression that no man might hope
to look upon it and not shudder. The fringed and bedizened
prince whose privilege it is to ride the pony and lead the ele
phant into a country village is poor and naked compared to
this chaos of paraphernalia, and the happy vanity of the one
is the very poverty of satisfaction compared to the majestic
serenity, the overwhelming complacency of the other.
" Who is this ? What is this?" That was the trembling in
quiry all down the line.
" Our guard ! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Saviour,
the country is infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happi
ness it is, in this life, to cut and stab and mangle and murder
unoffending Christians. Allah be with us !"
" Then hire a regiment ! Would you send us out among
these desperate hordes, with no salvation in our utmost need
but this old turret ?"
The dragoman laughed — not at the facetiousness of the sim-
516
THE APPARITION.
ile, for verily, that guide or that courier or that dragoman
never yet lived upon earth who had in him the faintest appre
ciation of a joke, even though that joke were so broad and so
ponderous that if it fell on him it would flatten him out like a
postage stamp — the dragoman laughed, and then, emboldened
\
THE GUARD.
by some thought that was in his brain, no doubt, proceeded to
extremities and winked.
In straits like these, when a man laughs, it is encouraging ;
when he winks, it is positively reassuring. He finally inti
mated that one guard would be sufficient to protect us, but that
that one was an absolute necessity. It was because of the
INSPECTING THE APPARITION. 517
moral weight his awful panoply would have with the Bedouins.
Then I said we didn't want any guard at all. If one fantastic
vagabond could protect eight armed Christians and a pack of
Arab servants from all harm, surely that detachment could
protect themselves. He shook his head doubtfully. Then I
said, just think of how it looks — think cf now it would read,
to self-reliant Americans, that we went sneaking through this
deserted wilderness under the protection of this masquerading
Arab, who wTould break his neck getting out of the country
if a man that was a man ever started after him. It was a
mean, low, degrading position. Why were we ever told to
bring navy revolvers with us if we had to be protected at last
by this infamous star-spangled scum of the desert ? These ap
peals were vain — the dragoman only smiled and shook his
head.
I rode to the front and struck up an acquaintance with King
Solomon-in-all-his-glory, and got him to show me his lingering
eternity of a gun. It had a rusty flint lock ; it was ringed
and barred and plated with silver from end to end, but it was
as desperately out of the perpendicular as are the billiard cues
of '49 that one finds yet in service in the ancient mining
camps of California. The muzzle was eaten by the rust of
centuries into a ragged filagree-work, like the end of a burnt-
out stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within — it was
flaked with iron rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed
the ponderous pistols and snapped them. They were rusty in
side, too — had not been loaded for a generation. I went back,
full of encouragement, and reported to the guide, and asked
him to discharge this dismantled fortress. It came out, then.
This fellow was a retainer of the Sheik of Tiberias. lie was
a source of Government revenue. lie was to the Empire of
Tiberias what the customs are to America. The Sheik im
posed guards upon travelers and charged them for it. It is a
lucrative source of emolument, and sometimes brings into the
national treasury as much as thirty-five or forty dollars a year.
I knew the warrior's secret nowr ; I knew the hollow vanity
of his rusty trumpery, and despised his asinine complacency.
518 A DISTINGUISHED PANORAMA.
I told on him, and with reckless daring the cavalcade rode
straight ahead into the perilous solitudes of the desert, and
scorned his frantic warnings of the mutilation and death that
hovered about them on every side.
Arrived at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the
lake, (I ought to mention that the lake lies six hundred feet
below the level of the Mediterranean — no traveler ever neglects
to flourish that fragment of news in his letters,) as bald and
unthrilling a panorama as any land can aiford, perhaps, was
spread out before us. Yet it was so crowded with historical
interest, that if all the pages that have been written about it
were spread upon its surface, they would flag it from horizon
to horizon like a pavement. Among the localities comprised
in this view, were Mount Ilermon ; the hills that border Cesa-
rea Philippi, Dan, the Sources of the Jordan and the Waters
ofMerom; Tiberias; the Sea of Galilee ; Joseph's Pit; Caper
naum ; Bethsaida ; the supposed scenes of the Sermon on the
Mount, the feeding of the multitudes and the miraculous
draught of fishes ; the declivity down which the swine ran to
the sea ; the entrance and the exit of the Jordan ; Safed, "the
city set upon a hill," one of the four holy cities of the Jews,
and the place where they believe the real Messiah will appear
when he comes to redeem the world ; part of the battle-field
of Hattin, where the knightly Crusaders fought their last fight,
and in a blaze of glory passed from the stage and ended their
splendid career forever ; Mount Tabor, the traditional scene of
the Lord's Transfiguration. And down toward the southeast
lay a landscape that suggested to my mind a quotation (imper
fectly remembered, no doubt :)
"The Ephraimites, not being called upon to share in the rich spoils of the Am-
monitish war, assembled a mighty host to fight against Jeptha, Judge of Israel ;
who, being apprised of their approach, gathered together the men of Israel and
gave them battle and put them to flight. To make his victory the more secure, he
stationed guards at the different fords and passages of the Jordan, with instructions
to let none pass who could not say Shibboleth. The Ephraimites, being of a dif
ferent tribe, could not frame to pronounce the word aright, but called it Sibboleth,
which proved them enemies and cost them their lives ; wherefore, forty and two
thousand fell at the different fords and passages of the Jordan that day."
LAST BATTLE OF THE CRUSADES. 519
We jogged along peacefully over the great caravan route
from Damascus to Jerusalem and Egypt, past Lubia and other
Syrian hamlets, perched, in the unvarying style, upon the sum
mit of steep mounds and hills, and fenced round about with
giant cactuses, (the sign of worthless land,) with prickly pears
upon them like hams, and came at last to the battle-field of
Hattin.
It is a grand, irregular plateau, and looks as if it might have
been created for a battle-field. Here the peerless Saladin met
the Christian host some seven hundred years ago, and broke
their power in Palestine for all time to come. There had long
been a truce between the opposing forces, but according to the
Guide-Book, Raynauld of Chatillon, Lord of Kerak, broke it
by plundering a Damascus caravan, and refusing to give up
either the merchants or their goods when Saladin demanded
them. This conduct of an insolent petty chieftain stung the
Sultan to the quick, and he swore that he would slaughter
Raynauld with his own hand, no matter how, or when, or
where he found him. Both armies prepared for war. Under
the weak King of Jerusalem was the very flower of the Chris
tian chivalry. He foolishly compelled them to undergo a long,
exhausting march, in the scorching sun, and then, without
water or other refreshment, ordered them to encamp in this
open plain. The splendidly mounted masses of Moslem soldiers
swept round the north end of Genessaret, burning and destroy
ing as they came, and pitched their camp in front of the oppo
sing lines. At dawn the terrific fight began. Surrounded on
all sides by the Sultan's swarming battalions, the Christian
Knights fought on without a hope for their lives. They fought
with desperate valor, but to no purpose ; the odds of heat and
numbers, and consuming thirst, were too great against them.
Towards the middle of the day the bravest of their band cut
their way through the Moslem ranks and gained the summit
of a little hill, and there, hour after hour, they closed around
the banner of the Cross, and beat back the charging squadrons
of the enemy.
But the doom of the Christian power was sealed. Sunset
520 MOUNT TABOR.
found Saladin Lord of Palestine, the Christian chivalry strewn
in heaps upon the field, and the King of Jerusalem, the Grand
Master of the Templars, and Kajnauld of Chatillon, captives
in the Sultan's tent. Saladin treated two of the prisoners with
princely courtesy, and ordered refreshments to be set before
them. When the King handed an iced Sherbet to Chatillon,
the Sultan said, " It is thou that givest it to him, not I." He
remembered his oath, and slaughtered the hapless Knight of
Chatillon with his own hand.
It was hard to realize that this silent plain had once re
sounded with martial music and trembled to the tramp of
armed men. It was hard to people this solitude with rushing
columns of cavalry, and stir its torpid pulses with the shouts
of victors, the shrieks of the wounded, and the flash of banner
and steel above the surging billows of war. A desolation is
here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life
and action.
We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance
of that old iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a
human being on the whole route, much less lawless hordes of
Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and alone, a giant sentinel
above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some fourteen hundred
feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone, sym
metrical and full of grace — a prominent landmark, and one
that is exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the -repul
sive monotony of desert Syria. We climbed the steep path to
its summit, through breezy glades of thorn and oak. The view
presented from its highest peak was almost beautiful. Below,
was the broad, level plain of Esdraelon, checkered with fields
like a chess-board, and full as smooth and level, seemingly ;
dotted about its borders with white, compact villages, and
faintly penciled, far and near, with the curving lines of roads
and trails. When it is robed in the fresh verdure of spring, it
must form a charming picture, even by itself. Skirting its
southern border rises " Little Ilermon," over whose summit a
glimpse of Gilboa is caught. Nain, famous for the raising of
the widow's son, and Endor, as famous for the performances
VIEW FROM TABOR.
521
of her witch, arc in view. To the eastward lies the Valley of
the Jordan and beyond it the mountains of Gilead. Westward
is Mount Carmel. Ilcrinon in the north — the table-lands of
Bashan — Safed, the holy city, gleaming white upon a tall spur
of the mountains of Lebanon — a steel-blue corner of the Sea
of Galilee — saddle-peaked Ilattin, traditional " Mount of Beat
itudes " and
mute witness
of the last
brave fight
of tli e Crusa
ding host for
Holy Cross —
these fill up
the picture.
To glance
at the salient
features of
this landscape
through the
p i c t uresque
framework of a ragged and ruined stone window-arch of the
time of Christ, thus hiding from sight all that is unattractive,
is to secure to yourself a pleasure worth climbing the moun
tain to enjoy. One must stand on his head to get the best
effect in a fine sunset, and set a landscape in a bold, strong
framework that is very close at hand, to bring out all its beau
ty. One learns this latter truth never more to forget it, in that
mimic land of enchantment, the wonderful garden of my lord
the Count Pallavicini, near Genoa. You go wandering for
hours among hills and wooded glens, artfully contrived to
leave the impression that Nature shaped them and not man ;
following winding paths and coming suddenly upon leaping
cascades and rustic bridges ; finding sylvan lakes where you
expected them not ; loitering through battered mediasval cas
tles in miniature that seem hoary with age and yet were built
a dozen years ago ; meditating over ancient crumbling tombs,
MOUNT TABOR.
522 A WONDERFUL GARDEN.
whose marble columns were marred and broken purposely by
the modern artist that made them ; stumbling unawares upon
toy palaces, wrought of rare and costly materials, and again
upon a peasant's hut, whose dilapidated furniture would never
suggest that it was made so to order ; sweeping round and
round in the midst of a forest on an enchanted wooden horse
that is moved by some invisible agency ; traversing Roman
roads and passing under majestic triumphal arches ; resting in
quaint bowers where unseen spirits discharge jets of water on
you from every possible direction, and where even the flowers
you touch assail you with a shower ; boating on a subterranean
lake among caverns and arches royally draped with clustering
stalactites, and passing out into open day upon another lake,
which is bordered with sloping banks of grass and gay with
patrician barges that swim at anchor in the shadoAv of a min
iature marble temple that rises out of the clear water and
glasses its white statues, its rich capitals and fluted columns
in the tranquil depths. So, from marvel to marvel you have
drifted on, thinking all the time that the one last seen must be
the chiefest. And, verily, the chiefest wonder is reserved until
the last, but you do not see it until you step ashore, and pass
ing through a wilderness of rare flowers, collected from every
corner of the earth, you stand at the door of one more mimic
temple. Right in this place the artist taxed his genius to the
utmost, and fairly opened the gates of fairy land. You look
through an unpretending pane of glass, stained yellow ; the
first thing you see is a mass of quivering foliage, ten short steps
before you, in the midst of which is a ragged opening like a
gateway — a thing that is common enough in nature, and not
apt to excite suspicions of a deep human design — and above
the bottom of the gateway, project, in the most careless way,
a few broad tropic leaves and brilliant flowers. All of a sud
den, through this bright, bold gateway, you catch a glimpse
of the faintest, softest, richest picture that ever graced the
dream of a dying Saint, since John saw the New Jerusalem
glimmering above the clouds of Heaven. A broad sweep of
sea, flecked with careening sails ; a sharp, jutting cape, and a
A NOTED BATTLE-FIELD. 523
lofty lighthouse on it ; a sloping lawn behind it ; beyond, a
portion of the old " city of palaces," with its parks and hills
and stately mansions ; beyond these, a prodigious mountain,
with its strong outlines sharply cut against ocean and sky ; and
over all, vagrant shreds and flakes of cloud, floating in a sea
of gold. The ocean is gold, the city is gold, the meadow, the
mountain, the sky — every thing is golden — rich, and mellow,
and dreamy as a vision of Paradise. No artist could put upon
canvas its entrancing beauty, and yet, without the yellow
glass, and the carefully contrived accident of a framework that'
cast it into enchanted distance and shut out from it all unat
tractive features, it was not a picture to fall into ecstacies over.
Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over us all.
There is nothing for it now but to come back to old Tabor,
though the subject is tiresome enough, and I can not stick to
it for wandering off to scenes that are pleasanter to remember.
I think I will skip, any how. There is nothing about Tabor
(except we concede that it was the scene of the Transfigura
tion,) but some gray old ruins, stacked up there in all ages of
the world from the days of stout Gideon and parties that
flourished thirty centuries ago to the fresh yesterday of Cru
sading times. It has it's Greek Convent, and the coffee there
is good, but never a splinter of the true cross or bone of a hal
lowed saint to arrest the idle thoughts of worldlings and turn
them into graver channels. A Catholic church is nothing to
me that has no relics.
The plain of Esdraelon — "the battle-field of the nations" —
only sets one to dreaming of Joshua, and Benhadad, and Saul,
and Gideon ; Tamerlane, Tancred, Cceur de Lion, and Saladin ;
the warrior Kings of Persia, Egypt's heroes, and Napoleon—
for they all fought here. If the magic of the moonlight could
summon from the graves of forgotten centuries and many lands
the countless myriads that have battled on this wide, far-
reaching floor, and array them in the thousand strange cos
tumes of their hundred nationalities, and send the vast host
sweeping down the plain, splendid witli plumes and banners
and glittering lances, I could stay here an age to see the phan-
524
HOME OF DEBORAH, THE PROPHETESS.
torn pageant. But the magic of the moonlight is a vanity and
a fraud ; and whoso putteth his trust in it shall suffer sorrow
and disappointment.
Down at the foot of Tabor, and just at the edge of the sto
ried Plain of Esdraelon, is the insignificant village of Deburieh,
where Deborah, prophetess of Israel, lived. It is just like
Magdala.
CHAPTEE L.
«
~TT7~E descended from Mount Tabor, crossed a deep ravine,
V V aud followed a hilly, rocky road to Nazareth — distant
two hours. All distances in the East are measured by hours,
not miles. A good horse will walk three miles an hour over
nearly any kind of a road ; therefore, an hour, here, always
stands for three miles. This method of computation is both
ersome and annoying ; and until one gets thoroughly accus
tomed to it, it carries no intelligence to his mind until he has
stopped and translated the pagan hours into Christian miles,
just as people do with the spoken words of a foreign language
they are acquainted with, but not familiarly enough to catch
the meaning in a moment. Distances traveled by human feet
are also estimated by hours and minutes, though I do not
know what the base of the calculation is. In Constantinople
you ask, " How far is it to the Consulate ?" and they answer,
" About ten minutes." " How far is it to the Lloyds' Agency ?"
" Quarter of an hour." " How far is it to the lower bridge ?"
"Four minutes." I can not be positive about it, but I think
that there, when a man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he
wants them a quarter of a minute in the legs and nine seconds
around the waist.
Two hours from Tabor to Nazareth — and as it was an un
commonly narrow, crooked trail, we necessarily met all the
camel trains and jackass caravans between Jericho and Jack
sonville in that particular place and nowhere else. The don
keys do not matter so much, because they are so small that
you can jump your horse over them if he is an animal of spirit,
526 MORE ENLIGHTENMENT.
but a camel is not jumpable. A camel is as tall as any ordi
nary dwelling-house in Syria — which is to say a camel is from
one to two, and sometimes nearly three feet taller than a good-
sized man. In this part of the country his load is oftenest in
the shape of colossal sacks — one on each side. • He and his
cargo take up as much room as a carriage. Think of meeting
this style of obstruction in a narrow trail. The camel would
not turn out for a king. He stalks serenely along, bringing
his cushioned stilts forward with the long, regular swring of a
pendulum, and whatever is in the way must get out of the wray
peaceably, or be wiped out forcibly by the bulky sacks. It
was a tiresome ride to us, and perfectly exhausting to the
horses. We were compelled to jump over upwrards of eighteen
hundred donkeys, and only one person in the party was un
seated less than sixty times by the camels. This seems like a
powerful statement, but the poet has said, " Things are not
what they seem." I can not think of any thing, now, more
certain to make one shudder, than to have a soft-footed camel
sneak up behind him and touch him on the ear with its cold,
flabby under-lip. A camel did this for one of the boys, who
was drooping over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced
up and saw the majestic apparition hovering above him, and
made frantic efforts to get out of the way, but the camel
reached out and bit him on the shoulder before he accom
plished it. This was the only pleasant incident of the jour
ney.
At Nazareth we camped in an olive grove near the Virgin
Mary's fountain, and that wonderful Arab "guard" came to
collect some bucksheesh for his " services " in following us from
Tiberias and warding off invisible dangers with the terrors of
his armament. The dragoman had paid his master, but that
counted as nothing — if you hire a man to sneeze for you, here,
and another man chooses to help him, you have got to pay
both. They do nothing whatever without pay. Ho\v it must
have surprised these people to hear the way of salvation offered
to them " without money and without price" If the manners,
the people or the customs of this country have changed since
GROTTO OF THE ANNUNCIATION. 527
the Saviour's time, the figures and metaphors of the Bible are
not the evidences to prove it by.
"We entered the great Latin Convent which is built over the
traditional dwelling-place of the Holy Family. We went
down a flight of fifteen steps below the ground level, and stood
in a small chapel tricked out with tapestry hangings, silver
lamps, and oil paintings. A spot marked by a cross, in the
marble floor, under the altar, was exhibited as the place made
forever holy by the feet of the Virgin when she stood up to
receive the message of the angel. So simple, so unpretending
a locality, to be the scene of so mighty an event ! The very
scene of the Annunciation — an event which has been com
memorated by splendid shrines and august temples all over the
civilized world, and one which the princes of art have made it
their loftiest ambition to picture worthily on their canvas ; a
spot whose history is familiar to the very children of every
house, and city, and obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of
Christendom ; a spot which myriads of men would toil across
the breadth of a world to see, would consider it a priceless
privilege to look upon. It was easy to think these thoughts.
But it was not easy to bring myself up to the magnitude of the
situation. I could sit off several thousand miles and imagine
the angel appearing, with shadowy wings and lustrous counte
nance, and note the glory that streamed downward upon the
Virgin's head while the message from the Throne of God fell
upon her ears — any one can do that, beyond the ocean, but few
can do it here. I saw the little recess from which the angel
stepped, but could not fill its void. The angels that I know
are creatures of unstable fancy — they will not fit in niches of
substantial stone. Imagination labors best in distant fields. I
doubt if any man can stand in the Grotto of the Annunciation
and people with the phantom images of his mind its too tan
gible walls of stone.
They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the
roof, which they said was hacked in two by the Moslem con
querors of Nazareth, in the vain hope of pulling down the
sanctuary. But the pillar remained miraculously suspended
528 NOTED GROTTOES IN GENERAL.
in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported then and still
supports the roof. By dividing this statement up among eight,
it was found not difficult to believe it.
These gifted Latin monks never do any thing by halves. If
they were to show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated
in the wilderness, you could depend upon it that they had on
hand the pole it was elevated on also, and even the hole it
stood in. They have got the " Grotto " of the Annunciation
here ; and just as convenient to it as one's throat is to his
mouth, they have also the Virgin's Kitchen, and even her sit
ting-room, where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour
play with Hebrew toys eighteen hundred years ago. All un
der one roof, and all clean, spacious, comfortable " grottoes."
It seems curious that personages intimately connected with the
Holy Family always lived in grottoes — in Nazareth, in Beth
lehem, in imperial Ephesus — and yet nobody else in their day
and generation thought of doing any thing of the kind. If
they ever did, their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we
ought to wonder at the peculiar marvel of the preservation of
these I speak of. When the Virgin fled from Herod's wrath,
she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same is there to this
day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was done
in a grotto ; the Saviour was born in a grotto — both are shown
to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that these tremen
dous events all happened in grottoes — and exceedingly fortu
nate, likewise, because the strongest houses must crumble to
ruin in time, but a grotto in the living rock will last forever.
It is an imposture — this grotto stuff — but it is one that all men
ought to thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret out a
lost locality made holy by some Scriptural event, they straight
way build a massive — almost imperishable — church there, and
preserve the memory of that locality for the gratification of
future generations. If it had been left to Protestants to do
this most worthy work, we would not even know where Jeru
salem is to-day, and the man who could go and put his finger
on Nazareth would be too wise for this world. The world
owes the Catholics its good will even for the happy rascality
SACRED RELICS. 529
of hewing out these bogus grottoes in the rock ; for it is infi
nitely more satisfactory to look at a grotto, where people have
faithfully believed for centuries that the Virgin once lived,
than to have to imagine a dwelling-place for her somewhere,
any where, nowhere, loose and at large all over this town of
Nazareth. There is too large a scope of country. The imag
ination can not work. There is no one particular spot to chain
your eye, rivet your interest, and make you think. The mem
ory of the Pilgrims can not perish while Plymouth Rock
remains to us. The old monks are wise. They knowr how to
drive a stake through a pleasant tradition that will hold it to
its place forever.
We visited the places where Jesus worked for fifteen years
as a carpenter, and where he attempted to teach in the syna
gogue and wras driven out by a mob. Catholic chapels stand
upon these sites and protect the little fragments of the ancient
wralls which remain. Our pilgrims broke off specimens. We
visited, also, a new chapel, in the midst of the town, which is
built around a boulder some twrelve feet long by four feet
thick ; the priests discovered, a few years ago, that the disciples
had sat upon this rock to rest, once, when they had walked up
from Capernaum. They hastened to preserve the relic. Helics
are very good property. Travelers are expected to pay for
seeing them, and they do it cheerfully. We like the idea.
One's conscience can never be the worse for the knowledge
that he has paid his way like a man. Our pilgrims would have
liked very well to get out their lampblack and stencil-plates
and paint their names on that rock, together with the names
of the villages they hail from in America, but the priests per
mit nothing of that kind. To speak the strict truth, however,
our party seldom offend in that wray, though we have men in
the ship who never lose an opportunity to do it. Our pilgrims'
chief sin is their lust for " specimens." I suppose that by this
time they know the dimensions of that rock to an inch, and its
weight to a ton ; and I do not hesitate to charge that they
will go back there to-night and try to carry it off.
This " Fountain of the Virgin " is the one which tradition
34
530 QUESTIONABLE FEMALE BEAUTY.
says Mary used to get water from, twenty times a day, when
she was a girl, and bear it away in a jar upon her head. The
water streams through faucets in the face of a wall of ancient
masonry which stands removed from the houses of the village.
The vouno; ffirls of Nazareth still collect about it bv the dozen
«/ O 0 «'
and keep up a riotous laughter and sky -larking. The Nazarene
FOUNTAIN OF THE VIRGIN.
girls are homely. Some of them have large, lustrous eyes, but
none of them have pretty faces. These girls wear a single
garment, usually, and it is loose, shapeless, of undecided color ;
it is generally out of repair, too. They wear, from crown to
jaw, curious strings of old coins, after the manner of the
belles of Tiberias, and brass jewelry upon their wrists and in
their ears. They wear no shoes and stockings. They are the
most human girls we have found in the country yet, and the
best natured. But there is no question that these picturesque
maidens sadly lack comeliness.
PILGRIM-PLAGIARIZING.
531
A pilgrim — the "Enthusiast " — said : " See that tall, grace
ful girl ! look at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance !"
Another pilgrim came along presently and said : "Observe
that tall, graceful girl ; what queenly Madonna-like graceful
ness of beauty is in her countenance."
I said : " She is not tall, she is short ; she is not beautiful,
she is home
ly ; she is
gr a c eful
enough, I
grant, but
she is rather
boisterous."
The third
and last pil
grim moved
by, before
long, and he
said: "Ah,
what a tall,
graceful
girl ! what
Madonna-
like grace
fulness of
q u e e n 1 y
beauty !"
The ver
dicts were
all in. It
was time,
now, to look
up the authorities for all these opinions. I found this para
graph, which follows. Written by whom ? Win. C. Grimes :
" After we were in the saddle, we rode down to the spring to have a last look at
the women of Nazareth, who were, as a class, much the prettiest that we had seen
in the East. As we approached the crowd a tall girl of nineteen advanced toward
\VI1AT MADOXXA-LIKE BEAUTY!"
532 "NOMADIC LIFE" LITERATURE.
Miriam and offered her a cup of water. Her movement was graceful and queenly.
We exclaimed on the spot at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance. White-
ly was suddenly thirsty, and begged for water, and drank it slowly, with his eyes
over the top of the cup, fixed on her large black eyes, which gazed on him quite
as curiously as he on her. Then Moreright wanted water. She gave it to him and
he managed to spill it so as to ask for another cup, and by the time she came to me
she saw through the operation ; her eyes were full of fun as she looked at me. 1
laughed outright, and she joined me in as gay a shout as ever countrv maiden in
old Orange county. I wished for a picture of her. A Madonna, whose face was a
portrait of that beautiful Nazareth girl, would be a 'thing of beauty' and 'a joy
forever.' "
That is the kind of gruel which has "been served out from
Palestine for ages. Commend me to Fennimore Cooper to find
beauty in the Indians, and to Grimes to find it in the Arabs.
Arab men are often fine looking, but Arab women are not.
We can all believe that the Virgin Mary was beautiful ; it is
not natural to think otherwise ; but does it follow that it is
our duty to find beauty in these present women of Nazareth?
I love to quote from Grimes, because he is so dramatic. And
because he is so romantic. And because he seems to care but
little whether he tells the truth or not, so he scares the reader
or excites his envy or his admiration.
He went through this peaceful land with one hand forever
on his revolver, and the other on his pocket-handkerchief. Al
ways, when he was not on the point of crying over a holy
place, he was on the point of killing an Arab. More surpris
ing things happened to him in Palestine than ever happened
to any traveler here or elsewhere since Munchausen died.
At Beit Jin, where nobody had interfered with him, he
crept out of his tent at dead of night and shot at what he
took to be an Arab lying on a rock, some distance away, plan
ning evil. The ball killed a wolf. Just before he fired, he
O '
makes a dramatic picture of himself — as usual, to scare the
reader :
"Was it imagination, or did I see a moving object on the surface of the rock ?
If it were a man, why did he not now drop me? He had a beautiful shot as I
stood out in my black boornoose against the white tent. I had the sensation of an
entering bullet in my throat, breast, brain."
Reckless creature !
"NOMADIC LIFE" LITERATURE.
533
Hiding toward Genessaret, they saw two Bedouins, and " we
looked to our pistols and loosened them quietly in our shawls,"
etc. Always cool.
In Samaria, he charged up a hill, in the face of a volley of
stones ; he fired into the crowd of men who threw them. He
says :
" I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the perfection of Amer
ican and English weapons, and the danger of attacking any one of the armed
Franks. I think the lesson of that ball not lost."
At Beitin he gave his whole band of Arab muleteers a piece
of his mind, and then—
;> I content
ed myself with
a solemn assu
rance that if
there occurred
another in
stance of diso
bedience to
orders, I
would thrash
the responsi
ble party as
he never
dreamed of
being thrash
ed, and if I
could not find
who was re
sponsible, I
would whip
them all, from
first to last,
whether there
was a govern
or at hand to
do it or I had
to do it my
self."
PUTNAM OUTDONE.
Perfectly fearless, this man.
lie rode down the perpendicular path in the rocks, from the
534 "NOMADIC LIFE" LITERATURE.
Castle of Banias to the oak grove, at a flying gallop, his horse
striding " thirty feet " at every bound. I stand prepared to bring
thirty reliable witnesses to prove that Putnam's famous feat at
Horseneck was insignificant compared to this.
Behold him — always theatrical — looking at Jerusalem — this
time, by an oversight, with his hand off his pistol for once.
"I stood in the road, my hand on my horse's neck, and with my dim eyes sought
to trace the outlines of the holy places which I had long before fixed in my mind,
but the fast-flowing tears forbade my succeeding. There were our Mohammedan
servants, a Latin monk, two Armenians and a Jew in our cortege, and all alike
gazed with overflowing eyes."
If Latin monks and Arabs cried, I know to a moral certain
ty that the horses cried also, and so the picture is complete.
But when necessity demanded, he could be firm as adamant.
In the Lebanon Valley an Arab youth — a Christian ; he is par
ticular to explain that Mohammedans do not steal — robbed
him of a paltry ten dollars' worth, of powder and shot. He
convicted him before a sheik and looked on while he was
punished by the terrible bastinado. Hear him :
" He (Mousa) was on his back in a twinkling, howling, shouting, screaming, but
he was carried out to the piazza before the door, where we could see the operation,
and laid face down. One man sat on his back and one on his legs, the latter hold
ing up his feet, while a third laid on the bare soles a rhinoceros-hide koorbash*
that whizzed through the air at every stroke. Poor Moreright was in agony, and
iSTama and Nama the Second (mother and sister of Mousa,) were on their faces beg
ging and wailing, now embracing my knees arid now "\Vhitely\s, while the brother,
outside, made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa's. Even Yusef came and
asked me on his knees to relent, and last of all, Betuni — the rascal had lost a feed-
bag in their house and had been loudest in his denunciations that morning — be
sought the Howajji to have mercy on the fellow."
But not he ! The punishment was " suspended," at the fif
teenth How, to hear the confession. Then Grimes and his party
rode away, and left the entire Christian family to be fined and
as severely punished as the Mohammedan sheik should deem
proper.
• " A Koorbash is Arabic for cowhide, the cow being a rhinoceros. It is the most cruel whip known to fame.
Heavy as lead, and flexible as India-rubber, usually about forty inches long and tapering gradually from an inch
in diameter to a point, it administers a blow which leave* its mark for tini€."— Scow Life in Egypt, by the
same author.
NOMADIC LIFE" LITERATURE.
535
" As I mounted, Yusof once more begged me to interfere and have mercy on
them, but I looked around at the dark faces of the crowd, and I couldn't find one
drop of pity in my heart for them."
lie closes his picture with a rollicking burst of humor which
contrasts finely with the grief of the mother and her children.
THE BASTINADO.
One more paragraph :
" Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in Palestine.
I wept, when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the starlight at Bethlehem, I
wept on the blessed shores of Galilee. My hand was no less firm on the rein, my
finger did not tremble on the trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right
hand along the shore of the blue sea" (weeping.) " My eye was not dimmed by
those tears nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who would sneer at my
emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyinga
through Hoi}' Land."
He never bored but he struck water.
536
NOMADIC LIFE" LITERATURE.
I am aware that this is a ^pretty voluminous notice of Mr.
Grimes' book. However, it is proper and legitimate to speak
of it, for " Nomadic Life in Palestine" is a representative book
— the representative of a class of Palestine books — and a criti-
"I WEPT."
cism upon it will serve for a criticism upon them all. And
since I am treating it in the comprehensive capacity of a rep
resentative book, I have taken the liberty of giving to both
book and author fictitious names. Perhaps it is in better taste,
any how, to do this.
CHAPTEE LI.
"VTAZARETH is wonderfully interesting because the town
-L^l has an air about it of being precisely as Jesus left it,
and one finds himself saying, all the time, " The boy Jesus has
stood in this doorway — has played in that street — has touched
these stones with his hands — has rambled over these chalky
hills." "Whoever shall write the Boyhood of Jesus ingenious
ly, will make a book which will possess a vivid interest for
young and old alike. I judge so from the greater interest we
found in Nazareth than any of our speculations upon Caper
naum and the Sea of Galilee gave rise to. It was not possible,
standing by the Sea of Galilee, to frame more than a vague,
far-away idea of the majestic Personage who walked upon the
crested waves as if they had been solid earth, and who touched
the dead and they rose up and spoke. I read among my notes,
now, with a new interest, some sentences from an edition of
1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament. [Extract.]
" Christ, kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures her. A leprous girl
cured by the water in which the infant Christ was washed, and becomes the servant
of Joseph and Mary. The leprous son of a Prince cured in like manner.
"A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule, miraculously
cured by the infant Saviour being put on his back, and is married to the girl who
had been cured of leprosy. Whereupon the bystanders praise God.
"Chapter 16. Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates, milk-pails, sieves or
boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not being skillful at his carpenter's trade.
The King of Jerusalem gives Joseph an order for a throne. Joseph works on it
for two years and makes it two spans too short. The King being angry with him,
Jesus comforts him — commands him to pull one side of the throne while he pulls
the other, and brings it to its proper dimensions.
"Chapter 19. Jesus, charged with throwing a boy from the roof of a house, mi-
538 DISCARDED LORE.
raculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him ; fetches water for his
mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously gathers the water in his mantle and
brings it home.
'• Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and the schoolmaster going to
whip him, his hand withers."
Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an
epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in
the churches and considered genuine fourteen or fifteen hun
dred years ago. In it this account of the fabled pho3iiix oc
curs :
" 1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection, which is seen in the
Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia.
" 2. There is a certain bird called a phoenix. Of this there is never but one at a
time, and that lives five hundred }rears. And when the time of its dissolution
draws near, that it must die, it makes itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and
.other spices, into which, when its time is fuliilled, it enters and dies.
"3. But its flesh, putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which, being nourished by
the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and when it is grown to a perfect
state, it takes up the nest in which the bones of its parent lie, and carries it from
Arabia into Egypt, to a city called Heliopolis:
"4. And flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon the altar of the
sun, and so returns from whence it came.
"5. The priests then search into the records of the time, and find that it returned
precisely at the end of five hundred years."
Business is business, and there is nothing like punctuality,
especially in a phcenix.
The few chapters relating to the infancy of the Saviour con
tain many things which seem frivolous and not worth preserv
ing. A large part of the remaining portions of the book read
like good Scripture, however. There is one verse that ought
not to have been rejected, because it so evidently prophetically
refers to the general run of Congresses of the United States :
"199. They carry themselves high, and as prudent men; and though they are
fools, yet would seem to be teachers."
I have set these extracts down, as I found them. Every
where, among the cathedrals of France and Italy, one finds
traditions of personages that do not figure in the Bible, and
of miracles that are not mentioned in its pages. But they are
SYRIAN TURNPIKE
539
all in this Apocryphal New Testament, and though they have
been ruled out of our modern Bible, it is claimed that they
were accepted gospel twelve or fifteen centuries ago, and
ranked as high in credit as any. One needs to read this book
before he visits those venerable cathedrals, with their treasures
of tabooed and forgotten tradition.
They imposed another pirate upon us at Nazareth — another
invincible Arab guard. We took our last look at the city,
clinging like a whitewashed wasp's nest to the hill-side, and at
eight o'clock in the morning, departed. We dismounted and
drove the
horses down
a bridle
path which
I think was
fully as
crooked as a
corkscrew ;
w li i c li I
know to be
as steep as
the down
ward sweep
of a rain
bow, and
which I be
lieve to be
the worst
piece of
road in the geography, except
one in the Sandwich Islands,
which I remember painfully,
and possibly one or two moun
tain trails in the Sierra Ke-
WANT OF DIGNITY. vadas. Often, in this narrow
path, the horse had to poise
himself nicely on a rude stone step and then drop his fore-feet
540 DANGEROUS PILGRIMS.
over the edge and down something more than half his own
height. This brought his nose near the ground, while his tail
pointed up toward the sky somewThere, and gave him the ap
pearance of preparing to stand on his head. A horse can not
look dignified in this position. We accomplished the long de
scent at last, and trotted across the great Plain of Esdraelon.
Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage.
The pilgrims read " Nomadic Life " and keep themselves in a
constant state of Quixotic heroism. They have their hands on
their pistols ,all the time, and every now and then, when you
least expect it, they snatch them out and take aim at Bedouins
wrho are not visible, and draw their knives and make savage
s
passes' at other Bedouins who do not exist. I am in deadly
peril always, for these spasms are sudden and irregular, and
of course I can hot tell when to be getting out of the way.
If I am accidentally murdered, some time, during one of these
romantic frenzies of the pilgrims, Mr. Grimes must be rigidly
held to answer as an accessory before the fact. If the pilgrims
would take deliberate aim and shoot at a man, it would be all
right and proper — because that man would not be in any clan
ger ; but these random assaults are what I object to. I do not
wish to see any more places like Esdraelon, where the ground
is level and people can gallop. It puts melodramatic nonsense
into the pilgrims' heads. All at once, when one is jogging
along stupidly in the sun, and thinking about something ever
so far away, here they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring and
whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till their heels
fly higher than their heads, and as they whiz by, out comes a
little potato-gun of a revolver, there is a startling little pop,
and a small pellet goes singing through the air. Now that I
have begun this pilgrimage, I intend to go through with it,
though sooth to say, nothing but the most desperate valor has
kept me to my purpose up to the present time. I do not mind
Bedouins, — I am not afraid of them ; because neither Bedouins
nor ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to harm us,
but I do feel afraid of my own comrades.
Arriving at the furthest verge of the Plain, we rode a little
HOME OF THE GREAT WITCH. 541
way up a lull and found ourselves at Endor, famous for its
witch. Her descendants are there yet. They were the wildest
horde of half-naked savages we have found thus far. They
swarmed out of inud bee-hives ; out of hovels of the dry-goods
box pattern ; out of gaping caves under shelving rocks; out
of crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead solitude and
silence of the place were no more, and a begging, screeching,
shouting mob were struggling about the horses' feet and block
ing the way. " Bucksheesh ! bucksheesh ! bucksheesh ! how-
ajji, bucksheesh !" It was Magdala over again, only here the
glare from the infidel eyes was fierce and full of hate. The
population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than
half the citizens live in caves in the rock. Dirt, degradation
and savagery are Endor's specialty. We say no more about
Magdala and Deburieh now. Endor heads the list. It is worse
than any Indian campoodie. The hill is barren, rocky, and for
bidding. No sprig of grass is visible, and only one tree. This
is a fig-tree, which maintains a precarious footing among the
rocks at the mouth of the dismal cavern once occupied by the
veritable Witch of Endor. In this cavern, tradition says, Saul,
the King, sat at midnight, and stared and trembled, while the
earth shook, the thunders crashed among the hills, and out of
the midst of fire and smoke the spirit of the dead prophet rose
up and confronted him. Saul had crept to this place in the
darkness, while his army slept, to learn what fate awaited him
in the morrow's battle. lie went away a sad man, to meet
disgrace and death.
A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of
the cavern, and wre were thirsty. The citizens of Endor ob
jected to our going in there. They do not mind dirt ; they do
not mind rags ; they do not mind vermin ; they do not mind
barbarous ignorance and savagery ; they do not mind a reason
able degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and holy
before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shud
der and grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips pollu
ting a spring whose waters must descend into their sanctified
gullets. We had no wanton desire to wound even their feel-
542 NAIN.
ings or trample upon their prejudices, but we were out of
water, thus early in the day, and were burning up with thirst.
It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that I
framed an aphorism which has already become celebrated. I
said : " Necessity knows no law." "We went in and drank.
We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping
them in squads and couples as we filed over the hills — the aged
first, the infants next, the young girls further on ; the strong
men ran beside us a mile, and only left when they had secured
the last possible piastre in the way of bucksheesh.
In an hour, we reached Naiii, where Christ raised the
widow's son to life. Naiii is Magdala on a small scale. It has
no population of any consequence. "Within a hundred yards
of it is the original graveyard, for aught I know ; the tomb
stones lie flat on the ground, which is Jewish fashion in Syria.
I believe the Moslems do not allow them to have upright
tombstones. A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered
over and whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projec
tion which is shaped into exceedingly rude attempts at orna
mentation. In the cities, there is often no appearance of a
grave at all ; a tall, slender marble tombstone, elaborately let-
tred, gilded and painted, marks the burial place, and this is
surmounted by a turban, so carved and shaped as to signify
the dead man's rank in life.
They showed a fragment of ancient wall which they said
was one side of the gate out of which the widow's dead son
was being brought so many centuries ago when Jesus met the
procession :
"Xow when he came nigh to the grate of the city, behold there was a dead man
carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow : and much people
of the city was with her.
" And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said. Weep not.
" And he came and touched the bier : and they that bare him stood still. And
he said, Young man, I say unto thee, arise.
"And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to
his mother.
" And there came a fear on all. And they glorified God, saying. That a great
prophet is risen up among us; and That God hath visited his people."
ORIENTAL SCENES. 5-i3
A little mosque stands upon the spot which tradition says
was occupied by the widow's dwelling. Two or three aged
Arabs sat about its door. We entered, and the pilgrims broke
specimens from the foundation walls, though they had to touch,
and even step, upon the " praying carpets " to do it. It was
almost the same as breaking pieces from the hearts of those
old Arabs. To step rudely upon the sacred praying mats, with
booted feet — a thing not done by any Arab — was to inflict
pain upon men who had not offended us in any way. Sup
pose a party of armed foreigners were to enter a village church
in America and break ornaments from the altar railings for
curiosities, and climb up and walk upon the Bible and the pul
pit cushions ? However, the cases are different. One is the
profanation of a temple of our faith — the other only the'profa-
nation of a pagan one.
We descended to the Plain again, and halted a moment at a
well — of Abraham's time, no doubt. It was in a desert place.
It was walled three feet above ground with squared and heavy
blocks of stone, after the manner of Bible pictures. Around
it some camels stood, and others knelt. There was a group of
sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children clambering
about them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their
tails. Tawny, black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags
and adorned with brazen armlets and pinchbeck ear-rings, were
poising water-jars upon their heads, or drawing water from the
well. A flock of sheep stood by, waiting for the shepherds to
fill the hollowed stones with water, so that they might drink —
stones which, like those that walled the well, were worn
smooth and deeply creased by the chafing chins of ft hundred
generations of thirsty animals. Picturesque Arabs sat upon
the ground, in groups, and. solemnly smoked their long-
stemmed chibouks. Other Arabs were filling black hog-skins
with water — skins which, well filled, and distended with water
till the short legs projected painfully out of tli^ proper line,
looked like the corpses of hogs bloated by drowning. Here
was a grand Oriental picture which I had worshiped a thou
sand times in soft, rich steel engravings ! But in the engra-
544
ORIENTAL SCENES.
ving there was no desolation ; no dirt ; no rags ; no fleas ; no
ugly features ; no sore eyes ; no feasting flies ; no besotted ig
norance in tlie countenances; no raw places on the donkeys'
backs ; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown tongues ; no
stench of camels ; no suggestion that a couple of tons of pow-
AN ORIENTAL WELL.
der placed under the party and touched off would heighten the
effect and give to the scene a genuine interest and a charm
which it would always be pleasant to recall, even though a
man lived a thousand years.
Oriental scenes look best in steel engravings. I can not be
imposed upon any more by that picture of the Queen of Sheba
visiting Solomon. I shall say to myself, You look fine, Mad
am, but your feet are not clean, and you smell like a camel.
THE ORIENTAL KISS.
545
ARABS SALUTING.
Presently a wild Arab in charge of a camel train recognized
an old friend in Ferguson, and they ran and fell upon each
other's necks and kissed
each other's grimy,
bearded faces upon both
cheeks. It explained
instantly a something
which had always seem
ed to me only a far
fetched Oriental figure
of speech. I refer to the
circumstance of Christ's
rebuking a Pharisee, or
some such character, and
reminding him that from
him he had received no " kiss of welcome." It did not seem
reasonable to me that men should kiss each other, but I am
aware, now, that they did. There was reason in it, too. The
custom was natural and proper ; because people must kiss, and
a man would not be likely to kiss one of the women of this
country of his own free will and accord. One must travel, to
learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never pos
sessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a
meaning.
We journeyed around the base of the mountain — " Little
Hermon," — past the old Crusaders' castle of El Fuleh, and
arrived at Slmnem. This \vas another Magdala, to a fraction,
frescoes and all. Here, tradition says, the prophet Samuel was
born, and here the Shunamite woman built a little house upon
the city wall for the accommodation of the prophet Elisha.
Elisha asked her what she expected in return. It was a per
fectly natural question, for these people are and were in the
habit of proffering favors and services and then expecting and
begging for pay. Elisha knew them well. He could not com
prehend that any body should build for him that humble little
chamber for the mere sake of old friendship, and with no selfish
motive whatever. It used to seem a very impolite, not to say
35
546
THE S H U N E M MIRACLE.
a rude question, for Elislia to ask the woman, but it does not
seem so to me now. The woman said she expected nothing.
Then for her goodness and her unselfishness, he rejoiced her
heart with the news that she should bear a son. It was a high
reward — but she would not have thanked him for a daughter
— daughters have always been unpopular here. The son was
born, grew, waxed strong, died. Elisha restored him to life
in Shunem.
We found here a grove of lemon trees — cool, shady, hung
with fruit. One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare,
but to me this grove seemed very beautiful. It icas beautiful.
I do not overestimate it. I must always remember Shunem
gratefully, as a place which gave to us this leafy shelter after
our long, hot ride. "We lunched, rested, chatted, smoked our
pipes an hour, and then mounted and moved on.
"FREE SONS OF THE DESERT."
As we trotted across the Plain of Jezreel, we met half a
dozen Digger Indians (Bedouins) with very long spears in their
JEZREEL. 547
hands, cavorting around on old crowbait horses, and spearing
imaginary enemies ; whooping, and fluttering their rags in the
wind, and carrying on in every respect like a pack of hopeless
lunatics. At last, here were the "wild, free sons of the desert,
speeding over the plain like the wind, on their beautiful Ara
bian mares " we had read so much about and longed so much
to see ! Here were the " picturesque costumes !" This was
the " gallant spectacle !" Tatterdemalion vagrants — cheap
braggadocio — " Arabian mares " spined and necked like the
ichthyosaurus in the museum, and humped and cornered like
a dromedary ! To glance at the genuine son of the desert is
to take the romance out of him forever — to behold his steed is
to long in charity to strip his harness off and let him fall to
pieces.
Presently we came to a ruinous old town on a hill, the same
being the ancient Jezreel.
Ahab, King of Samaria, (this wras a very vast kingdom, for
those days, and was very nearly half as large as Rhode Island)
dwelt in the city of Jezreel, which wras his capital. Near him
lived a man by the name of Naboth, \vho had a vineyard. The
King asked him for it, and wlien he would not give it, offered
to buy it. But Naboth refused to sell it. In those days it wras
considered a sort of crime to part with one's inheritance at any
price — and even if a man did part with it, it reverted to him
self or his heirs again at the next jubilee year. So this spoiled
child of a Kino; went and lay down on the bed with his face to
*v~~~~~^~^~^~~^
the wail, and grieve^ sorely. The Queen, a notorious character
in those days, and whose name is a by-word and a reproach
even in these, came in and asked him wherefore he sorrowed,
and he told her. Jezebel said she could secure the vineyard ;
and she went forth and forged letters to the nobles and wise
men, in the King's name, and ordered them to proclaim a fast
and set Naboth on high before the people, and suborn two wit
nesses to swear that he had blasphemed. They did it, and the
people stoned the accused by the city wall, and he died. Then
Jezebel came and told the King, and said, Behold, Naboth is
no more — rise up and seize the vineyard. So Ahab seized the
548 THE CHURCH MILITANT.
vineyard, and went into it to possess it. But the Prophet Eli
jah came to him there and read his fate to him, and the fate
of Jezebel ; and said that in the place where dogs licked the
blood of Naboth, dogs should also lick his blood — and he said,
likewise, the dogs should eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.
In the course of time, the King was killed in battle, and when
his chariot wheels were washed in the pool of Samaria, the
clogs licked the blood. In after years, Jehu, who was King of
Israel, marched down against Jezreel, by order of one of the
Prophets, and administered one of those convincing rebukes so
common among the people of those days : he killed many
kings and their subjects, and as he came along he saw Jezebel,
painted and finely dressed, looking out of a window, and or
dered that she be thrown down to him. A servant did it, and
Jehu's horse trampled her under foot. Then Jehu went in and
sat down to dinner ; and presently he said, Go and bury this
cursed woman, for she is a King's daughter. The spirit of
charity came upon him too late, however, for the prophecy had
already been fulfilled — the dogs had eaten her, and they
" found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the
palms of her hands."
Ahab, the late King, had left a helpless family behind him,
and Jehu killed seventy of the orphan sons. Then he killed
all the relatives, and teachers, and servants and friends of the
family, and rested from his labors, until he was come near to
Samaria, wThere he met forty-two persons and asked them who
they were ; they said they were brothers of the King of Judah.
He killed them. When he got to Samaria, he said he would
show his zeal for the Lord ; so he gathered all the priests and
people together that worshiped Baal, pretending that he was
going to adopt that worship and offer up a great sacrifice ; and
when they were all shut up where they could not defend them
selves, he caused every person of them to be killed. Then
Jehu, the good missionary, rested from his labors once more.
"We went back to the valley, and rode' to the Fountain of
Ain Jelud. They call it the Fountain of Jezreel, usually. It
is a pond about one hundred feet square and four feet deep,
GIDEON'S BAND — SAMARIA. 549
with a stream of water trickling into it from under an over
hanging ledge of rocks. It is in the midst of a great solitude.
Here Gideon pitched his camp in the old times ; behind Shu-
nem lay the " Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Children of
the East," who were " as grasshoppers for multitude ; both
they and their camels were without number, as the sand by
the sea-side for multitude." Which means that there were one
hundred and thirty-five thousand men, and that they had
transportation service accordingly.
Gideon, with only three hundred men, surprised them in the
night, and stood by and looked on while they butchered each
other until a hundred and twenty thousand lay dead on the
field.
We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started
again at one o'clock in the morning. Somewhere towards
daylight we passed the locality where the best authenticated
tradition locates the pit into which Joseph's brethren threw
him, and about noon, after passing over a succession of moun
tain tops, clad with groves of fig and olive trees, with the Med
iterranean in sight some forty miles away, and going by many
ancient Biblical cities whose inhabitants glowered savagely
upon our Christian procession, and were seemingly inclined to
practice on it with stones, we came to the singularly terraced
and unlovely hills that betrayed that we were out of Galilee
and into Samaria at last.
We climbed a high hill to visit the city of Samaria, where
the woman may have hailed from who conversed with Christ
at Jacob's Well, and from whence, no doubt, came also the cel
ebrated Good Samaritan. Herod the Great is said to have
made a magnificent city of this place, and a great number of
coarse limestone columns, twenty feet high and two feet
through, that are almost guiltless of architectural grace of
shape and ornament, are pointed out by many authors as evi
dence of the fact. They would not have been considered
handsome in ancient Greece, however.
The inhabitants of this camp are particularly vicious, and
stoned two parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who
550 SAMARIA.
brought about the difficulty by showing their revolvers when
they did not intend to use them — a thing which is deemed bad
judgment in the Far West, and ought certainly to be so con
sidered any where. In the new Territories, when a man puts
his hand on a weapon, he knows that he must use it ; he must
use it instantly or expect to be shot down where he stands.
Those pilgrims had been reading Grimes.
There was nothing for us to do in Samaria but buy handfuls
of old Roman coins at a franc a dozen, and look at a dilapi
dated church of the Crusaders and a vault in it which once
contained the body of John the Baptist. This relic was long
ago carried awTay to Genoa.
Samaria stood a disastrous siege, once, in the days of Elisha,
at the hands of the King of Syria. Provisions reached such a
figure that " an ass' head was sold for eighty pieces of silver
and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of
silver."
An incident recorded of that heavy time will give one a
very good idea of the distress that prevailed within these
crumbling walls. As the King was walking upon the battle
ments one day, " a woman cried out, saying, Help, my lord, O
King ! And the King said, "What aileth thee ? and she an
swered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may
eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we
boiled my son, and did eat him ; and I said unto her on the
next day, Give thy son that we may eat him ; and she hath
hid her son."
The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty
hours the prices of food should go down to nothing, almost,
and it was so. The Syrian army broke camp and fled, for some
cause or other, the famine was relieved from without, and many
a shoddy speculator in dove's dung and ass's meat was ruined.
We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and
hurry on. At two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at an
cient Shechem, between the historic Mounts of Gerizim and
Ebal where in the old times the books of the law, the curses
and the blessings, were read from the heights to the Jewish
multitudes below.
OHAPTEE LII. ,
narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situ-
ated, is under high cultivation, and the soil is exceed
ingly black and fertile. It is well watered, and its affluent
vegetation gains effect by contrast with the barren hills that
tower on either side. One of these hills is the ancient Mount
of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses ; and wise men
who seek for fulfillments of prophecy think they find here a
wonder of this kind — to wit, that the Mount of Blessings is
strangely fertile and its mate as strangely unproductive. We
could not see that there was really much difference between
them in this respect, however.
Shechem is distinguished as one of the residences of the pa
triarch Jacob, and as the seat of those tribes that cut them
selves loose from their brethren of Israel and propagated doc
trines not in conformity with those of the original Jewish
creed. For thousands of years this clan have dwelt in Shechem
under strict tabu, and having little commerce or fellowship
with their fellow men of any religion or nationality. For gen
erations they have not numbered more than one or two hun
dred, but they still adhere to their ancient faith and maintain
their ancient rites and ceremonies. Talk of family and old
descent ! Princes and nobles pride themselves upon lineages
they can trace back some hundreds of years. What is this
trifle to this handful of old first families of Shechem, who can
name their fathers straight back without a flaw for thousands
— straight back to a period so remote that men reared in a
country where the days of two hundred years ago are called
552
THE OLDEST MSS. EXTANT.
" ancient " times grow dazed and bewildered when they try to
comprehend it ! Here is respectability for you — here is " fam
ily" — here is high descent worth talking about. This sad,
proud remnant of a once mighty community still hold them
selves aloof from all the world ; they still live as their fathers
lived, labor as their fathers labored, think as they did, feel as
they did, worship in the same place, in sight of the same land
marks, and in the same quaint, patriarchal way their ancestors
did more than thirty centuries ago. I found myself gazing at
any straggling scion of this strange race with a riveted fasci
nation, just as one would stare at a living mastodon, or a meg
atherium that had moved in the grey dawn of creation and
seen the wonders of that mysterious world that was before the
flood.
Carefully preserved among the sacred archives of this curious
community is
a MSS. copy
't^^ddfik^- of the ancient
Jewish law,
which is said
to be the old
est document
on earth. It
is written on
vellum, and is
some four or
five thousand
years old.
Nothing but
bucksheesh
can purchase a sight. Its fame is somewhat dimmed in these
latter days, because of the doubts so many authors of Palestine
travels have felt themselves privileged to cast upon it. Speak
ing of this MSS. reminds me that I procured from the high-
priest of this ancient Samaritan community, at great expense, a
secret document of still higher antiquity and far more extraor
dinary interest, which I propose to publish as soon as I have
finished translating it.
S1IECHEM.
JOSEPH'S TOMB — JACOB'S WELL. 553
Joshua gave his dying injunction to the children of Israel at
Shechem, and buried a valuable treasure secretly under an oak
tree there about the same time. The superstitious Samaritans
have always been afraid to hunt for it. They believe it is
guarded by fierce spirits invisible to men.
About a mile and a half from Shechem we halted at the
base of Mount Ebal, before a little square area, inclosed by a
high stone wall, neatly whitewashed. Across one end of this
inclosure is a tomb built after the manner of the Moslems. It
is the tomb of Joseph. No truth is better authenticated than
this.
When Joseph was dying he prophesied that exodus of the
Israelites from Egypt which occurred four hundred years after
wards. At the same time he exacted of his people an oath
that when they journeyed to the land of Canaan, they would
bear his bones with them and bury them in the ancient inher
itance of his fathers. The oath was kept.
"And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt,
buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of
Hamor the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver."
Few tombs on earth command the veneration of so many
races and men of divers creeds as this of Joseph. " Samaritan
and Jew, Moslem and Christian alike, revere it, and honor it
with their visits. The tomb of Joseph, the dutiful son, the
affectionate, forgiving brother, the virtuous man, the wise
Prince and ruler. Egypt felt his influence — the world knows
his history."
In this same " parcel of ground " which Jacob bought of the
sons of Hamor for a hundred pieces of silver, is Jacob's cele
brated well. It is cut in the solid rock, and is nine feet square
and ninety feet deep. The name of this unpretending hole in
the ground, which one might pass by and take no notice of, is
as familiar as household words to even the children and the
peasants of many a far-off country. It is more famous than
the Parthenon ; it is older than the Pyramids.
It was by this well that Jesus sat and talked with a woman
554 CAMPING WITH THE ARABS.
of that strange, antiquated Samaritan community I have been
speaking of, and told her of the mysterious water of life. As
descendants of old English nobles still cherish in the traditions
of their houses how that this king or that king tarried a day
with some favored ancestor three hundred years ago, no doubt
the descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in She-
chem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of
their ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah
of the Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a dis
tinction such as this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and
human nature remembers contact with the illustrious, always.
For an offense done to the family honor, the sons of Jacob
exterminated all Shechem once.
We left Jacob's Well and traveled till eight in the evening,
but rather slowly, for we had been in the saddle nineteen
hours, and the horses were cruelly tired. We got so far ahead
of the tents that we had to camp in an Arab village, and sleep
on the ground. We could have slept in the largest of the
houses ; but there were some little drawbacks : it was populous
with vermin, it had a dirt floor, it was in no respect cleanly,
and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom, and two
donkeys in the parlor. Outside there were no inconveniences,
except that the dusky, ragged, earnest-eyed villagers of both
sexes and all ages grouped themselves on their haunches all
around us, and discussed us and criticised us with noisy tongues
till midnight. We did not mind the noise, being tired, but,
doubtless, the reader is aware that it is almost an impossible
thing to go to sleep when you know that people are looking at
you. We went to bed at ten, and got up again at two and
started once more. Thus are people persecuted by dragomen,
whose sole ambition in life is to get ahead of each other.
About daylight we passed Shiloh, where the Ark of the Cov
enant rested three hundred years, and at whose gates good old
Eli fell down and "brake his neck" when the messenger,
riding hard from the battle, told him of the defeat of his peo
ple, the death of his sons, and, more than all, the capture of
Israel's pride, her hope, her refuge, the ancient Ark her fore-
JACOB'S LADDER. 555
fathers brought with them out of Egypt. It is little wonder
that under circumstances like these he fell down and brake his
neck. But Sliiloh had no charms for us. We were so cold
that there was no comfort but in motion, and so drowsy
we could hardly sit upon the horses.
After a while we came to a shapeless mass of ruins, which
still bears the name of Beth-el. It wa*s here that Jacob lay
down and had that superb vision of angels flitting up and
down a ladder that reached from the clouds to earth, and
caught glimpses of their blessed home through the open gates
of Heaven.
The pilgrims took what was left of the hallowed ruin, and
we pressed on toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jeru
salem.
The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more
rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became.
There could not have been more fragments of stone strewn
broadcast over this part of the world, if every ten square feet
of the land had been occupied by a separate and distinct stone
cutter's establishment for an age. There \vas hardly a tree or
a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast
friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.
Ko landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that
which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only differ
ence between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps,
is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the
surrounding country.
We passed Ramah, and Beroth, and on the right saw the
tomb of the prophet Samuel, perched high upon a command
ing eminence. Still no Jerusalem came in sight. We hurried
on impatiently. We halted a moment at the ancient Fountain
of Beira, but its stones, worn deeply by the chins of thirsty
animals that are dead and gone centuries ago, had no interest
for us — we longed to see Jerusalem. We spurred up hill after
hill, and usually began to stretch our necks minutes before we
got to the top — but disappointment always followed : — more
stupid hills beyond — more unsightly landscape — no Holy City.
556
JERUSALEM.
At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bits of wall
and crumbling arches began to line the way — we toiled up one
more hill, and every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat
on high ! Jerusalem !
Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid,
massed together and hooped with high gray walls, the vener
able city gleamed in the sun. So small ! Why, it was no
larger than an American village of four thousand inhabitants,
and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of thirty thousand.
Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.
We dismounted and looked, without speaking a dozen sen
tences, across the wide intervening valley for an hour or more ;
and noted those prominent features of the city that pictures
make familiar to all men from their school days till their
death. We could recognize the Tower of Hippicus, the
Mosque of Omar, the Damascus Gate, the Mount of Olives,
GATE OP JERUSALEM.
the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the Tower of David, and the Gar
den of Gethsemane — and dating from these landmarks could
tell very nearly the localities of many others we were not able
to distinguish.
JERUSALEM. 557
I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that
not even our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual
in the party whose brain was not teeming with thoughts and
images and memories invoked by the grand history of the ven
erable city that lay before us, but still among them all was no
" voice of them that wept."
There was no call for tears. Tears would have been out of
place. The thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry,
sublimity, and more than all, dignity. Such thoughts do not
find their appropriate expression in the emotions of the
nursery.
Just after noon we entered these narrow, crooked streets,
by the ancient and the famed Damascus Gate, and now for
several hours I have been trying to comprehend that I am
actually in the illustrious old city where Solomon dwelt, where
Abraham held converse with the Deity, and where walls still
stand that witnessed the spectacle of the Crucifixion.
CHAPTEE LIII.
A FAST walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem
and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not
know how else to make one understand how small it is. The
appearance of the city is peculiar. It is as knobby with count
less little domes as a prison door is with bolt-heads. Every
house has from one to half a dozen of these white plastered
domes of stone, broad and low, sitting in the centre of, or in a
cluster upon, the flat roof. Wherefore, when one looks down
from an eminence, upon the compact mass of houses (so close
ly crowded together, in fact, that there is no appearance of
streets at all, and so the city looks solid,) he sees the knobbiest
town in the world, except Constantinople. It looks as if it
might be roofed, from centre to circumference, with inverted
saucers. The monotony of the view is interrupted only by the
great Mosque of Omar, the Tower of Hippicus, and one or two
other buildings that rise into commanding prominence.
The houses are generally two stories high, built strongly of
masonry, whitewashed or plastered outside, and have a cage
of wooden lattice-work projecting in front of every window.
To reproduce a Jerusalem street, it would only be necessary to
up-end a chicken-coop and hang it before each window in an
alley of American houses.
The streets are roughly and badly paved with stone, and
are tolerably crooked — enough so to make each street appear
to close together constantly and come to an end about a hun
dred yards ahead of a pilgrim as long as he chooses to walk in
it. Projecting from the top of the lower story of many of the
JERUSALEM.
559
houses is a very narrow porcli-roof or shed, without supports
from below ; and I have several times seen cats jump across
the street from one shed to the other when they were out call
ing. The cats could have jumped double the distance without
extraordinary exertion. I mention these things to give an idea
of how narrow the streets are. Since a cat can jump across
them without the least inconvenience, it is hardly necessary to
state that such streets are too narrow for carriages. These
vehicles can not navigate the Holy City.
The population of Jerusalem is compose of Moslems, Jews,
Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek
Catholics, and a handful of Protestants. One hundred of the
latter sect are all that dwell now in this birthplace of Chris
tianity. The nice shades of nationality comprised in the above
list, and the languages spoken by them, are altogether too
numerous to
mention. It
seems to me
that all the
races and
colors and
tongues of the
earth must be
represented
among the
fourteen thou-
sand souls
that dwell in
Jerusalem.
Hags, wretch
edness, pover
ty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence
of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself,
abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you
on every hand, and they know but one word of but one lan
guage apparently — the eternal " bucksheesh." To see the
numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that
BEGGARS IX JERUSALEM.
560 THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might sup
pose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel
of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the
waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and
lifeless. I would not desire to live here.
One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre. It is right
in the city, near the western gate ; it and the place of the Cru
cifixion, and, in fact, every other place intimately connected
with that tremendous event, are ingeniously massed together
and covered by one roof — the dome of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre.
Entering the building, through the midst of the usual assem
blage of beggars, one sees on his left a few Turkish guards —
for Christians of different sects will not only quarrel, but fight,
also, in this sacred place, if allowed to do it. Before you is a
marble slab, which covers the Stone of Unction, whereon the
Saviour's body was laid to prepare it for burial. It was found
necessary to conceal the real stone in this way in order to save
it from destruction. Pilgrims were too much given to chip
ping off pieces of it to carry home. Near by is a circular rail
ing which marks the spot where the Virgin stood when the
Lord's body was anointed.
Entering the great Rotunda, we stand before the most sacred
locality in Christendom — the grave of Jesus. It is in the
centre of the church, and immediately under the great dome.
It is inclosed in a sort of little temple of yellow and white
stone, of fanciful design. Within the little temple is a portion
of the very stone which was rolled away from the door of the
Sepulchre, and on which the angel was sitting when Mary
came thither " at early dawn." Stooping low, we enter the
vault — the Sepulchre itself. It is only about six feet by seven,
and the stone couch on which the dead Saviour lay extends
from end to end of the apartment and occupies half its width.
It is covered with a marble slab which has been much worn by
the lips of pilgrims. This slab serves as an altar, now. Over
it hang some fifty gold and silver lamps, which are kept always
burning, and the place is otherwise scandalized by trumpery
gewgaws and tawdry ornamentation.
THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 561
All sects of Christians (except Protestants,) have chapels
under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and each
must keep to itself and not venture upon another's ground. It
has been proven conclusively that they can not worship together
around the grave of the Saviour of the World in peace. The
chapel of the Syrians is not handsome ; that of the Copts is
the humblest of them all. It is nothing but a dismal cavern,
roughly hewn in the living rock of the Hill of Calvary. In
one side of it two ancient tombs are hewn, which are claimed
to be those in which Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea
were buried.
As we moved among the great piers and pillars of another
part of the church, we came upon a party of black-robed,
animal-looking Italian monks, with candles in their hands, who
were chanting something in Latin, and going through some
kind of religious performance around a disk of white marble
let into the floor. It was there that the risen Saviour appeared
to Mary Magdalen in the likeness of a gardener. Near by
was a similar stone, shaped like a star — here the Magdalen
herself stood, at the same time. Monks were performing in
this place also. They perform every where — all over the vast
building, and at all hours. Their candles are always flitting
about in the gloom, and making the dim old church more dis
mal than there is any necessity that it should be, even though
it is a tomb.
We were shown the place where our Lord appeared to His
mother after the Resurrection. Here, also, a marble slab marks
the place where St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Con-
stantine, found the crosses about three hundred years after the
Crucifixion. According to the legend, this great discovery
elicited extravagant demonstrations of joy. But they wrere of
short duration. The question intruded itself: "Which bore
the blessed Saviour, and which the thieves ?" To be in doubt,
in so mighty a matter as this — to be uncertain which one to
adore — was a grievous misfortune. It turned the public joy
to sorrow. But when lived there a holy priest who could not
set so simple a trouble as this at rest ? One of these soon hit
36
562 THE LEGEND.
upon a plan that would be a certain test. A noble lady lay
very ill in Jerusalem. The wise priests ordered that the three
crosses be taken to her bedside one at a time. It was done.
When her eyes fell upon the first one, she uttered a scream
that was heard beyond the Damascus Gate, and even upon the
Mount of Olives, it was said, and then fell back in a deadly
swoon. They recovered her and brought the second cross.
Instantly she went into fearful convulsions, and it was with
the greatest difficulty that six strong men could hold her.
They were afraid, now, to bring in the third cross. They be
gan to fear that possibly they had fallen upon the wrong
crosses, and that the true cross was not with this number at
all. However, as the wroman seemed likely to die with the
convulsions that were tearing her, they concluded that the third
could do no more than put her out of her misery with a happy
dispatch. So they brought it, and behold, a miracle ! The
woman sprang from her bed, smiling and joyful, and perfectly
restored to health. When we listen to evidence like this, we
can not but believe. We would be ashamed to doubt, and
properly, too. Even the very part of Jerusalem where this all
occurred is there yet. So there is really no room for doubt.
The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a frag
ment of the genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ
was bound when they scourged him. But we could not see it,
because it was dark inside the screen. However, a baton is
kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts through a hole in the
screen, and then he no longer doubts that the true Pillar of
Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to doubt
it, for he can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as distinctly
as he could feel any thing.
Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve
a piece of the True Cross, but it is gone, now. This piece of
the cross was discovered in the sixteenth century. The Latin
priests say it was stolen away, long ago, by priests of another
sect. That seems like a hard statement to make, but \ve know
very well that it was stolen, because we have seen it ourselves
in several of the cathedrals of Italy and France.
GODFREY'S SWORD. 563
But the relic that touched us most was the plain old sword
of that stout Crusader, Godfrey of Bulloigne — King Godfrey
of Jerusalem. No blade in Christendom wields such enchant
ment as this — no blade of all that rust in the ancestral halls
of Europe is able to invoke such visions of romance in the
brain of him who looks upon it — none that can prate of such
chivalric deeds or tell such brave tales of the warrior days of
old. It stirs within a man every memory of the Holy Wars
that has been sleeping in his brain for years, and peoples his
thoughts with mail-clad images, with marching armies, with
battles and with sieges. It speaks to him of Baldwin, and
Tancred, the princely Saladin, and great Richard of the Lion
Heart. It was with just such blades as these that these splen
did heroes of romance used to segregate a man, so to speak,
and leave the half of him to fall one way and the other half
the other. This very sword has cloven hundreds of Saracen
Knights from crown to chin in those old times when Godfrey
wielded it. It was enchanted, then, by a genius that was un
der the command of King Solomon. When danger approached
its master's tent it always struck the shield and clanged out a
fierce alarm upon the startled ear of night. In times of doubt,
or in fog or darkness, if it were drawn from its sheath it
would point instantly toward the foe, and thus reveal the way
— and it would also attempt to start after them of its own ac
cord. A Christian could not be so disguised that it would not
know him and refuse to hurt him — nor a Moslem so disguised
that it would not leap from its scabbard and take his life.
These statements are all well authenticated in many legends
that are among the most trustworthy legends the good old
Catholic monks preserve. I can never forget old Godfrey's
sword, now. I tried it on a Moslem, and clove him in twain
like a doughnut. The spirit of Grimes was upon me, and if
I had had a graveyard I would have destroyed all the infidels
in Jerusalem. I wiped the blood off the old sword and handed
it back to the priest — I did not want the fresh gore to obliter
ate those sacred spots that crimsoned its brightness one day
six hundred years ago and thus gave Godfrey warning that
before the sun went down his journey of life would end.
564:
PRISON OF THE SAVIOUR.
Still moving through the gloom of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre we came to a small chapel, hewn out of the rock —
CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
a place which has been known as " The Prison of Our Lord "
for many centuries. Tradition says that here the Saviour was
THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. 565
confined just previously to the crucifixion. Under an altar by
the door was a pair of stone stocks for human legs. These
things are called the " Bonds of Christ," and the use they were
once put to has given them the name they now bear.
The Greek Chapel is the most roomy, the richest and the
showiest chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its
altar, like that of all the Greek churches, is a lofty screen that
extends clear across the chapel, and is gorgeous with gilding
and pictures. The numerous lamps that hang before it are of
gold and silver, and cost great sums.
But the feature of the place is a short column that rises from
the middle of the marble pavement of the chapel, and marks
the exact centre of the earth. The most reliable traditions tell
us that this was known to be the earth's centre, ages ago, and
that when Christ was upon earth he set all doubts upon the
subject at rest forever, by stating with his own lips that the
tradition was correct. Remember, He said that that particu
lar column stood upon the centre of the world. If the centre
of the world changes, the column changes its position accord
ingly. This column has moved three different times, of its own
accord. This is because, in great convulsions of nature, at
three different times, masses of the earth — whole ranges of
mountains, probably — have flown off into space, thus lessening
the diameter of the earth, and changing the exact locality of
its centre by a point or two. This is a very curious and inter
esting circumstance, and is a withering rebuke to those philos
ophers who would make us believe that it is not possible for
any portion of the earth to fly off into space.
To satisfy himself that this spot was really the centre of the
earth, a sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending
to the dome of the church to see if the sun gave him a shadow
at noon. He came down perfectly convinced. The day was
very cloudy and the sun threw no shadows at all ; but the man
was satisfied that if the sun had come out and made shadows
it could not have made any for him. Proofs like these are not
to be set aside by the idle tongues of cavilers. To such as are
not bigoted, and are willing to be convinced, they carry a con
viction that nothing can ever shake.
566
A LONG LOST KELATIVE.
If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are
wanted, to satisfy the headstrong and the foolish that this is
the genuine centre of the earth, they are here. The greatest
of them lies in the fact that from under this very column was
taken the dust from which Adam was made. This can surely
be regarded in the light of a settler. It is not likely that the
original first man would have been made from an inferior
o
quality of earth when it was entirely convenient to get first
quality from the world's centre. This will strike any reflect
ing mind forcibly. That Adam was formed of dirt procured
in this very spot is amply proven by the fact that in six thou
sand years
no man has
ever been
able to
prove that
the dirt was
not procured
here where
of he was
made.
It is a
singular cir
ri u instance
that right
under the
roof of this
same great
church, and
not far away
from that
i 1 1 u s trious
column,
Adam him
self, the fa
ther of the
human race,
lies buried. There is no question that he is actually buried
THE GRAVE OF ADAM.
THE MARTYRED SOLDIER. 567
in the grave which is pointed out as his — there can be none —
because it has never yet been proven that that grave is not
the grave in which he is buried.
o
The tomb of Adam ! How touching it was, here in a land
of strangers, far away from home, and friends, and all who
cared for me, thus to discover the grave of a blood relation.
True, a distant one, ~but still a relation. The unerring instinct
of nature thrilled its recognition. The fountain of my filial
affection was stirred to its profoundest depths, and I gave way
to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst
into teare. I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave
of my poor dead relative. Let him who would sneer at my
emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his
taste in my journeyings through Holy Land. Noble old man
— he did not live to see me — he did not live to see his child.
And I — I — alas, I did not live to see him. Weighed down by
sorrow and disappointment, he died before I was born — six
thousand brief summers before I was born. But let us try to
bear it with fortitude. Let us trust that he is better off, where
he is. Let us take comfort in the thought that his loss is our
eternal gain.
The next place the guide took us to in the holy church was
an altar dedicated to the Roman soldier wrho was of the mili
tary guard that attended at the crucifixion to keep order, and
who — when the vail of the Temple was rent in the awful dark
ness that followed ; when the rock of Golgotha was split asun
der by an earthquake ; when the artillery of heaven thundered,
and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead
flitted about the streets of Jerusalem — shook with fear and
said, " Surely this was the Son of God !" Where this altar
stands now, that Roman soldier stood then, in full view of the
crucified Saviour — in full sight and hearing of all the marvels
that were transpiring far and wide about the circumference of
the Hill of Calvary. And in this self-same spot the priests of
the Temple beheaded him for those blasphemous words he had
spoken.
In this altar they used to keep one of the most curious relics
568 THE INSCRIPTION.
that human eyes ever looked upon — a thing that had power to
fascinate the beholder in some mysterious way and keep him
gazing for hours together. It was nothing less than the copper
plate Pilate put upon the Saviour's cross, and upon which he
wrote, " THIS is THE KING OF THE JEWS." I think St. Helena,
the mother of Constantine, found this wonderful memento
when she was here in the third century. She traveled all over
Palestine, and was always fortunate. Whenever the good old
enthusiast found a thing mentioned in her Bible, Old or New,
she would go and search for that thing, and never stop until
she found it. If it was Adam, she would find Adam ; if it was
the Ark, she would find the Ark ; if it was Goliah, or Joshua,
she would find them. She found the inscription here that I
was speaking of, I think. She found it in this very spot, close
to where the martyred Roman soldier stood. That copper
plate is in one of the churches in Rome, now. Any one can
see it there. The inscription is very distinct.
We passed along a few steps and sawr the altar built over
the very spot where the good Catholic priests say the soldiers
divided the raiment of the Saviour.
Then we went down into a cavern which cavilers say was
once a cistern. It is a chapel, now, however — the Chapel of
St. Helena. It is fifty-one feet long by forty-three wide. In
it is a marble chair which Helena used to sit in while she su
perintended her workmen when they were digging and delving
for the True Cross. In this place is an altar dedicated to St.
Dimas, the penitent thief. A new bronze statue is here — a
statue of St. Helena. It reminded us of poor Maximilian, so
lately shot. He presented it to this chapel when he was about
to leave for his throne in Mexico.
From the cistern we descended twelve steps into a large
roughly-shaped grotto, carved wholly out of the living rock.
Helena blasted it out when she was searching for the true
cross. She had a laborious piece of work, here, but it was
richly rewarded. Out of this place she got the crown of
thorns, the nails of the cross, the true cross itself, and the cross
of the penitent thief. When she thought she had found every
CHAPEL OF THE MOCKING.
thing and was about to stop, she was told in a dream to con
tinue a day longer. It was very fortunate. She did so, and
found the cross of the other thief.
The walls and roof of this grotto still weep bitter tears in
memory of the event that transpired on Calvary, and devout
pilgrims groan and sob when these sad tears fall upon them
from the dripping rock. The monks call this apartment the
"Chapel of the Invention ' of the Cross" — a name which is
unfortunate, because it leads the ignorant to imagine that a
tacit acknowledgment is thus made that the tradition that
Helena found the true cross here is a fiction — an invention.
It is a happiness to know, however, that intelligent people do
not doubt the story in any of its particulars.
Priests of any of the chapels and denominations in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre can visit this sacred grotto to
weep and pray and worship the gentle Redeemer. Two differ
ent congregations are not allowed to enter at the same time,
however, because they always fight.
Still marching through the venerable Church of the Holy
Sepulchre, among chanting priests in coarse long robes and
sandals ; pilgrims of all colors and many nationalities, in all
sorts of strange costumes ; under dusky arches and by dingy
piers and columns ; through a sombre cathedral gloom freight
ed with smoke and incense, and faintly starred with scores of
candles that appeared suddenly and as suddenly disappeared,
or drifted mysteriously hither and thither about the distant
aisles like ghostly jack-o'-lanterns — we came at last to a small
chapel which is called the " Chapel of the Mocking." Under
the altar was a fragment of a marble column ; this was the
seat Christ sat on when he was reviled, and mockingly made
King, crowned with a crown of thorns and sceptred with a
reed. It was here that they blindfolded him and struck him,
and said in derision, " Prophesy who it is that smote thee."
The tradition that this is the identical spot of the mocking is
a very ancient one. The guide said that Saewulf was the first
to mention it. I do not know Saewulf, but still, I can not
well refuse to receive his evidence — none of us can.
570 PLACE OF THE CRUCIFIXION.
They showed us where the great Godfrey and his brother
Baldwin, the first Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay bu
ried by that sacred sepulchre they had fought so long and so
valiantly to wrrest from the hands of the infidel. But the
niches that had contained the ashes of these renowned crusa
ders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs were
gone — destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church,
because Godfrey and Baldwin wrere Latin princes, and had
been reared in a Christian faith whose creed differed in some
unimportant respects from theirs.
We passed on, and halted before the tomb of Melchisedek !
You will remember Melchisedek, no doubt ; he was the King
who came out and levied a tribute on Abraham the time that
he pursued Lot's captors to Dan, and took all their property
from them. That was about four thousand years ago, and
Melchisedek died shortly afterward. However, his tomb is in
a good state of preservation.
When one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the
Sepulchre itself is the first thing he desires to see, and really
is almost the first thing he does see. The next thing he has a
strong yearning to see is the spot where the Saviour was cru
cified. But this they exhibit last. It is the crowning glory of
the place. One is grave and thoughtful when he stands in the
little Tomb of the Saviour — he could not well be otherwise in
such a place — but he has not the slightest possible belief that
ever the Lord lay there, and so the interest he feels in the spot
is very, very greatly marred by that reflection. He looks at
the place where Mary stood, in another 'part of the church,
and where John stood, and Mary Magdalen ; where the mob
derided the Lord ; where the angel sat ; where the crown of
thorns was found, and the true cross ; where the risen Saviour
appeared — he looks at all these places with interest, but with
the same conviction he felt in the case of the Sepulchre, that
there is nothing genuine about them, and that they are imag
inary holy places created by the monks. But the place of the
Crucifixion affects him differently. He fully believes that he
is looking upon the very spot where the Saviour gave up his
PLACE OF THE CRUCIFIXION. 571
life. He remembers that Christ was very celebrated, long be
fore he came to Jerusalem ; he knows that his fame was so
great that crowds followed him all the time ; he is aware that
his entry into the city produced a stirring sensation, and that
his reception was a kind of ovation ; he can not overlook the
fact that when he was crucified there were very many in Jeru
salem who believed that he was the true Son of God. To pub
licly execute such a personage was sufficient in itself to make
the locality of the execution a memorable place for ages ; add
ed to this, the storm, the darkness, the earthquake, the rending
of the vail of the Temple, and the untimely waking of the
dead, were'events calculated to fix the execution and the scene
of it in the memory of even the most thoughtless witness.
Fathers would tell their sons about the strange afftiir, and
point out the spot ; the sons would transmit the story to their
children, and thus a period of three hundred years would ea
sily be spanned* — at which time Helena came and built a
church upon Calvary to commemorate the death and burial of
the Lord and preserve the sacred place in the memories of
men ; since that time there has always been a church there.
It is not possible that there can be any mistake about the local
ity of the Crucifixion. Not half a dozen persons knew where
they buried the Saviour, perhaps, and a burial is not a start
ling event, any how ; therefore, we can be pardoned for unbe
lief in the Sepulchre, but not in the place of the Crucifixion.
Five hundred years hence there will be no vestige of Bunker
Hill Monument left, but America will still know where the
battle was fought and where "Warren fell. The crucifixion of
Christ was too notable an event in Jerusalem, and the Hill of
Calvary made too celebrated by it, to be forgotten in the short
space of three hundred years. I climbed the stairway in the
church which brings one to the top of the small inclosed pin
nacle of rock, and looked upon the place where the true cross
once stood, wTith a far more absorbing interest than I had ever
felt in any thing earthly before. I could not believe that the
*The thought is Mr. Prime's, not mine, and is full of good sense. I borrowed it
from his " Tent Life."— M. T.
572 PLACE OF THE CRUCIFIXION.
three holes in the top of the rock were the actual ones the
crosses stood in, but I felt satisfied that those crosses had stood
so near the place now occupied by them, that the few feet of
possible difference were a matter of no consequence.
When one stands where the Saviour was crucified, he finds
it all he can do to keep it strictly before his mind that Christ
was not crucified in a Catholic Church. He must remind him
self every now and then that the great event transpired in the
open air, and not in a gloomy, candle-lighted cell in a little
corner of a vast church, tip-stairs — a small cell all bejeweled
and bespangled with flashy ornamentation, in execrable taste,
tinder a marble altar like a table, is a circular hole in the
marble floor, corresponding with the one just under it in which
the true cross stood. The first thing every one does is to kneel
down and take a candle and examine this hole. He does this
strange prospecting with an amount of gravity that can never
be estimated or appreciated by a man who has not seen the op
eration. Then he holds his candle before a richly engraved pic
ture of the Saviour, done on a massy slab of gold, and wonder
fully rayed and starred with diamonds, which hangs above the
hole within the altar, and his solemnity changes to lively admi
ration. He rises and faces the finely wrought figures of the Sav
iour and the malefactors uplifted upon their crosses behind the
altar, and bright with a metallic lustre of many colors. He turns
next to the figures close to them of the Virgin and Mary Mag
dalen ; next to the rift in the living rock made by the earth
quake at the time of the Crucifixion, and an extension of which
he had seen before in the wall of one of the grottoes below ;
he looks next at the show-case with a figure of the Yirgin in it,
and is amazed at the princely fortune in precious gems and
jewelry that hangs so thickly about the form as to hide it like
a garment almost. All about the apartment the gaudy trap
pings of the Greek Church offend the eye and keep the mind
on the rack to remember that this is the Place of the Cruci
fixion — Golgotha — the Mount of Calvary. And the last thing
he looks at is that which was also the first — the place where
the true cross stood. That will chain him to the spot and
PLACE OF THE CRUCIFIXION. 573
compel him to look once more, and once again, after he has
satisfied all curiosity and lost all interest concerning the other
matters pertaining to the locality.
And so I close my chapter on the Church of the Holy Sep
ulchre — the most sacred locality on earth to millions and mil
lions of men, and women, and children, the noble and the
humble, bond and free. In its history from the-first, and in its
tremendous associations, it is the most illustrious edifice in
Christendom. With all its clap-trap side-shows and unseemly
impostures of every kind, it is still grand, reverend, venerable
— for a god died there ; for fifteen hundred years its shrines
have been wet with the tears of pilgrims from the earth's re
motest confines ; for more than two hundred, the most gallant
knights that ever wielded sword wasted their lives away in a
struggle to seize it and hold it sacred from infidel pollution.
Even in our own day a war, that cost millions of treasure and
rivers of blood, was fought because two rival nations claimed
the sole right to put a new dome upon it. History is full of
this old Church of the Holy Sepulchre — full of blood that was
shed because of the respect and the veneration in which men
held the last resting-place of the meek and lowly, the mild and
gentle, Prince of Peace !
CHAPTEE LIV.
WE were standing in a narrow street, by the Tower of
Antonio. " On these stones that are crumbling away,"
the guide said, "the Saviour sat and rested before taking up the
cross. This is the beginning of the Sorrowful "Way, or the Way
of Grief." The party took note of the sacred spot, and moved
on. "We passed under the " Ecce Homo Arch," and saw the
very window from which Pilate's wife warned her husband to
have nothing to do with the persecution of the Just Man.
This window is in an excellent state of preservation, consider
ing its great age. They showed us where Jesus rested the
second time, and where the mob refused to give him up, and
said, " Let his blood be upon our heads, and upon our children's
children forever." The French Catholics are building a church
on this spot, and with their usual veneration for historical
relics, are incorporating into the new such scraps of ancient
walls as they have found there. Further on, we saw the spot
where the fainting Saviour fell under the weight of his cross.
A great granite column of some ancient temple lay there at
the time, and the heavy cross struck it such a blow that it
broke in two in the middle. Such was the guide's story when
he halted us before the broken column.
"We crossed a street, and came presently to the former resi
dence of St. Veronica. "When the Saviour passed there, she
came out, full of womanly compassion, and spoke pitying words
to him, undaunted by the hootings and the threatenings of the
mob, and wiped the perspiration from his face with her hand
kerchief. "We had heard so much of St. Veronica, and seen
THE SORROWFUL WAY. 575
her picture by so many masters, that it was like meeting an
old friend unexpectedly to come upon her ancient home in Je
rusalem. The strangest thing about the incident that has
made her name so famous, is, that when she wiped the perspi
ration away, the print of the Saviour's face remained upon the
handkerchief, a perfect portrait, and so remains unto this day.
We knew this, because we saw this handkerchief in a cathe
dral in Paris, in another in Spain, and in two others in Italy.
In the Milan cathedral it costs five francs to see it, and at St.
Peter's, at Rome, it is almost impossible to see it at any price.
"No tradition is so amply verified as this of St. Veronica and
her handkerchief.
At the next corner we saw a deep indention in the hard stone
masonry of the corner of a house, but might have gone heed
lessly by it but that the guide said it was made by the elbow
of the Saviour, who stumbled here and fell. Presently we
came to just such another indention in a stone wall. The guide
said the Saviour fell here, also, and made this depression with
his elbow.
There were other places where the Lord fell, and others
where he rested ; but one of the most curious landmarks of
ancient history we found on this morning walk through the
crooked lanes that lead toward Calvary, was a certain stone
built into a house — a stone that was so seamed and scarred
that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face.
The projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by
the passionate kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant
lands. We asked " Why ?" The guide said it was because
this was one of " the very stones of Jerusalem " that Christ
mentioned when he was reproved for permitting the people to
cry " Hosannah !" when he made his memorable entry into the
city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said, " But there is no
evidence that the stones did cry out — Christ said that if the
people stopped from shouting Hosannah, the very stones would
do it." The guide was perfectly serene. He said, calmly,
" This is one of the stones that would have cried out." It was
of, little use to try to shake this fellow's simple faith — it was
easy to see that.
576 THE WANDERING JEW.
And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and
abiding interest — the veritable house where the unhappy
wretch once lived who has been celebrated in song and story
for more than eighteen hundred years as the Wandering Jew.
On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood in this old
doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the strug
gling mob that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour
would Ifave sat down and rested him a moment, pushed him
rudely away and said, " Move on !" The Lord said, " Move
on, thou, likewise," and the command has never been revoked
from that day to this. All men know how that the miscreant
upon whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down
the wide world, for ages and ages, seeking rest and never find
ing it — courting death but always in vain — longing to stop, in
city, in wilderness, in desert solitudes, yet hearing always that
relentless warning to march — march on ! They say — do these
hoary traditions — that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and
slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and
by-ways, the Wandering Jew was seen always in the thickest
of the fight, and that when battle-axes gleamed in the air, he
bowed his head beneath them ; when swords flashed their
deadly lightnings, he sprang in their way ; he bared his breast
to whizzing javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every
weapon that promised death and forgetfulness, and rest. But
it was useless — he walked forth out of the carnage without a
wound. And it is said that five hundred years afterward he
followed Mahomet when he carried destruction to the cities of
Arabia, and then turned against him, hoping in this way to
win the death of a traitor. His calculations were wrong
again. ~No quarter was given to any living creature but one,
and that was the only one of all the host that did not want it.
He sought death five hundred years later, in the wars of the
Crusades, and offered himself to famine and pestilence at As-
calon. He escaped again — he could not die. These repeated
annoyances could have at last but one effect — they shook his
confidence. Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a
kind of desultory toying with the most promising of the aids
THE WANDERING JEW.
577
and implements of destruction, but with small hope, as a gen
eral thing. lie has speculated some in cholera and railroads,
and has taken almost a lively interest in infernal machines and
patent medicines. He is old, now, and grave, as becomes an
age like his ; he indulges in no light amusements save that he
goes sometimes to executions, and is fond of funerals.
There is one thing he can not avoid ; go where he will about
the world, he must never fail to report in Jerusalem every fif
tieth year. Only a year or two ago he was here for the thirty-
seventh time since Jesus was crucified on Calvary. They say
that many old people, who are here now, saw him then, and
TilE WANDERING JEW.
had seen him before. He looks always the same — old, and
withered, and hollow-eyed, and listless, save that there is about
him something which seems to suggest that he is looking for some
one, expecting some one — the friends of his youth, perhaps.
But the most of them are dead, now. He always pokes about the
37
578 THE WANDERING JEW.
old streets looking lonesome, making his mark on a wall here
and there, and eyeing the oldest buildings with a sort of friendly
half interest ; and he sheds a few tears at the threshold of his
ancient dwelling, and bitter, bitter tears they are. Then he col
lects his rent and leaves again. He has been seen standing near
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on many a starlight night,
for he has cherished an idea for many centuries that if he could
only enter there, he could rest. But when he approaches, the
doors slam to with a crash, the earth trembles, and all the lights
in Jerusalem burn a ghastly blue ! He does this every fifty
years, just the same. It is hopeless, but then it is hard to break
habits one has been eighteen hundred years accustomed to.
The old tourist is far away on his wanderings, now. How he
must smile to see a pack of blockheads like us, galloping about
the world, and looking wise, and imagining we are finding
out a good deal about it ! He must have a consuming con
tempt for the ignorant, complacent asses that go skurrying
about the world in these railroading days and call it traveling.
When the guide pointed out where the Wandering Jew had
left his familiar mark upon a wall, I was filled with astonish
ment. It read :
"S. T.— 1860— X."
All I have revealed about the Wandering Jew can be amply
proven by reference to our guide.
The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around
it, occupy a fourth part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount
Moriah, where King Solomon's Temple stood. This Mosque is
the holiest place the Mohammedan knows, outside of Mecca.
Up to within a year or two past, no Christian could gain ad
mission to it or its court for love or money. But the prohibi
tion has been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh.
I need not speak of the wronderful beauty and the exquisite
grace and symmetry that have made this Mosque so celebrated
— because I did not see them. One can not see such things at
an instant glance — one frequently only finds out how really
beautiful a really beautiful woman is after considerable ac-
ROCK. 579
quaintance with her ; and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to
majestic mountains and to mosques — especially to mosques.
The great feature of the Mosque of Omar is the prodigious
rock in the centre of its rotunda. It was upon this rock that
Abraham came eo near offering up his son Isaac — this, at
least, is authentic — it is very much more to be relied on than
most of the traditions, at any rate. On this rock, also, the
angel stood and threatened Jerusalem, and David persuaded
him to spare the city. Mahomet was well acquainted with
this stone. From it he ascended to heaven. The stone tried
to follow him, and if the angel Gabriel had not happened by
the merest good luck to be there to seize it, it would have done
it. Very few people have a grip like Gabriel — the prints of
his monstrous fingers, two inches deep, are to be seen in that
rock to-day.
This rock, large as it is, is suspended in the air. It does not
touch any thing at all. The guide said so. This is very won
derful. In the place on it where Mahomet stood, he left his
foot-prints in the solid stone. I should judge that he wore
about eighteens. But what I was going to say, when I spoke
of the rock being suspended, was, that in the floor of the cav
ern under it they showed us a slab which they said covered a
hole which was a thing of extraordinary interest to all Mo
hammedans, because that hole leads down to perdition, and
every soul that is transferred from thence to Heaven must
pass up through this orifice. Mahomet stands there and lifts
them out by the hair. All Mohammedans shave their heads,
but they are careful to leave a lock of hair for the Prophet to
take hold of. Our guide observed that a good Mohammedan
would consider himself doomed to stay with the damned for
ever if he were to lose his scalp-lock and die before it grew
again. The most of them that I have seen ought to stay with
the damned, any how, without reference to how they were
barbered.
For several ages no woman has been allowed to enter the
cavern where that important hole is. The reason is that one
of the sex was once caught there blabbing every thing she
580 THE GREAT MOSQUE.
knew about what was going on above ground, to the rapscal
lions in the infernal regions down below. She carried her gos
siping to such an extreme that nothing could be kept private
— nothing could be done or said on earth but every body in
perdition knew all about it before the sun went down. It
was about time to suppress this woman's telegraph, and it was
promptly done. Her breath subsided about the same time.
The inside of the great mosque is very showy with variega
ted marble walls and with windows and inscriptions of elabo
rate mosaic. The Turks have their sacred relics, like the
Catholics. The guide showed us the veritable armor worn by
the great son-in-law and successor of Mahomet, and also the
buckler of Mahomet's uncle. The great iron railing which
surrounds the rock was ornamented in one place with a thou
sand rags tied to its open work. These are to remind Maho
met not to forget the worshipers who placed them there.
It is considered the next best thing to tying threads around his
finger by way of reminders.
Just outside the mosque is a miniature temple, which marks
the spot where David and Goliah used to sit and judge the
people.*
Every where about the Mosque of Omar are portions of pil
lars, curiously wrought altars, and fragments of elegantly
carved marble — precious remains of Solomon's Temple. These
have been dug from all depths in the soil and rubbish of
Mount Moriah, and the Moslems have always shown a disposi
tion to preserve them with the utmost care. At that portion
of the ancient wall of Solomon's Temple which is called the
Jew's Place of Wailing, and where the Hebrews assemble
every Friday to kiss the venerated stones and weep over the
fallen greatness of Zion, any one can see a part of the unques
tioned and undisputed Temple of Solomon, the same consisting
of three or four stones lying one upon the other, each of which
is about twice as long as a seven-octave piano, and about as thick
as such a piano is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is
* A pilgrim informs me that it wns not David and Goliah, but David and Saul. I
stick to my own statement — the guide told me, and he ought to know.
FRAGMENTS OF THE TEMPLE.
581
only a year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting
Christian rubbish like ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar
and see the costly marbles that once adorned the inner Temple
was annulled. The designs wrought upon these fragments are
all quaint and peculiar, and so the charm of novelty is added
to the deep interest they naturally inspire. One meets with
these venerable scraps at every turn, especially in the neighbor
ing Mosque el Aksa, into whose inner walls a very large num
ber of them are carefully built for preservation. These pieces
of stone, stained and dusty with age, dimly hint at a grandeur
we have all been taught to regard as the princeliest ever seen
on earth ; and they call up pictures of a pageant that is familiar
MOSQUE OF OMAit.
to all imaginations — camels laden with spices and treasure —
beautiful slaves, presents for Solomon's harem — a long cavalcade
of richly caparisoned beasts and warriors — and Sheba's Queen in
the van of this vision of " Oriental magnificence." These ele
gant fragments bear a richer interest than the solemn vastness,
of the stones the Jews kiss in the Place of Wailing can ever
have for the heedless sinner.
Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the
582 SURFEITED WITH SIGHTS.
orange-trees that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is
a wilderness of pillars — remains of the ancient Temple ; they
supported it. There are ponderous archways down there,
also, over which the destroying " plough " of prophecy passed
harmless. It is pleasant to know we are disappointed, in that
we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual Temple
of Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that
they were a monkish humbug and a fraud.
We are surfeited with sights. Nothing has any fascination for
us, now, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We have been
there every day, and have not grown tired of it ; but we are
weary of every thing else. The sights are too many. They
swarm about you at every step ; no single foot of ground in all
Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without a
stirring and important history of its own. It is a very relief
to steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to
talk unceasingly about every stone you step upon and drag you
back ages and ages to the day when it achieved celebrity.
It seems hardly real when I find myself leaning for a
moment on a ruined wall and looking listlessly down into the
historic pool of Bethesda. I did not think such things could
be so crowded together as to diminish their interest. But in
serious truth, we have been drifting about, for several days,
using our eyes and our ears more from a sense of duty than
any higher and worthier reason. And too often we have been
glad when it was time to go home and be distressed no more
about illustrious localities.
Our pilgrims compress too much into one day. One can
gorge sights to repletion as well as sweetmeats. Since we
breakfasted, this morning, we have seen enough to have fur
nished us food for a year's reflection if we could have seen
the various objects in comfort and looked upon them deliber
ately. We visited the pool of Hezekiah, where David saw
Uriah's wife coming from the bath and fell in love with her.
We went out of the city by the Jaffa gate, and of course
were told many things about its Tower of Hippicus.
We rode across the Valley of Hinnom, between two of the
SURFEITED WITH SIGHTS. 583
Pools of Gihon, and by an aqueduct built by Solomon, which
still conveys water to the city. We ascended the Hill of Evil
Counsel, where Judas received his thirty pieces of silver, and
we also lingered a moment under the tree a venerable tradition
says he hanged himself on.
We descended to the canon again, and then the guide began
to give name and history to every bank and boulder we came
to : " This was the Field of Blood ; these cuttings in
the rocks were shrines and temples of Moloch ; here they sac
rificed children ; yonder is the Zion Gate ; the Tyropean Val
ley ; the Hill of Ophel ; here is the junction of the Valley of
Jehoshaphat — on your right is the Well of Job." We turned
up Jehoshaphat. The recital went on. " This is the Mount
of Olives ; this is the Hill of Offense ; the nest of huts is the
Village of Siloam ; here, yonder, every where, is the King's
Garden ; under this great tree Zacharias, the high priest, was
murdered ; yonder is Mount Moriah and the Temple wall ; the
tomb of Absalom ; the tomb of St. James ; the tomb of Zach
arias ; beyond, are the Garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of
the Virgin Mary ; here is the Pool of Siloam, and—
We said we would dismount, and quench our thirst, and
rest. We were burning up with the heat. We were failing
under the accumulated fatigue of days and days of ceaseless,
marching. All wrere willing.
The Pool is a deep, walled ditch, through which a clear
stream of water runs, that comes from under Jerusalem some
where, and passing through the Fountain of the Virgin, or
being supplied from it, reaches this place by way of a tunnel
of heavy masonry. The famous pool looked exactly as it
looked in Solomon's time, no doubt, and the same dusky, Ori
ental women, came down in their old Oriental way, and car
ried oft jars of the water on their heads, just as they did three
thousand years ago, and just as they will do; fifty thousand
years hence if any of them are still left on earth.
We went away from there and stopped at the Fountain of
the Virgin. But the water was not good, and there was no
comfort or peace any where, on accoimt. of the regiment of boys
584 THE GOLDEN GATE.
and girls and beggars that persecuted us all the time for buck-
sheesh. The guide wanted us to give them some money, and
we did it ; but when he went on to say that they were starving
to death we could not but feel that we had done a great sin in
throwing obstacles in the way of such a desirable consumma
tion, and so we tried to collect it back, but it could not be
done.
We entered the Garden of Gethsemane, and we visited the
Tomb of the Virgin, both of which we had seen before. It is
not meet that I should speak of them now. A more fitting
time will come.
I can not speak now of the Mount of Olives or its view of
Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab ; nor of
the Damascus Gate or the tree that was planted by King God
frey of Jerusalem. One ought to feel pleasantly when he talks
of these things. I can not say any thing about the stone col
umn that projects over Jehoshaphat from the Temple wall like
a cannon, except that the Moslems believe Mahomet will sit
astride of it when he comes to judge the world. It is a pity
he could not judge it from some roost of his own in Mecca,
without trespassing on ourlioly ground. Close by is the Golden
Gate, in the Temple wall — a gate that was an elegant piece of
sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is even so yet. From
it, in ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned loose the
scapegoat and let him flee to the wilderness and bear away his
twelve-month load of the sins of the people. If they were to
turn one loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of
Gethsemane, till these miserable vagabonds here would gobble
him up,* sins and all. They wouldn't care. Mutton-chops and
sin is good enough living for them. The Moslems watch the
Golden Gate writh a jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they
have an honored tradition that when it falls, Islamism will fall,
and with it the Ottoman Empire. It did not grieve me any to
notice that the old gate was getting a little shaky.
We are at home again. We are exhausted. The sun has
roasted us, almost.
* Favorite pilgrim expression.
COMFORTS. 585
We have full comfort in one reflection, however. Our expe
riences in Europe have taught us that in time this fatigue will
be forgotten ; the heat will be forgotten ; the thirst, the tire
some volubility of the guide, the persecutions of the beggars
—and then, all that will be left will be pleasant memories of
Jerusalem, memories we shall call up with always increasing
interest as the years go by, memories which some day will be
come all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers
them shall have faded out of our minds never again to return.
School-boy days are no happier than the days of after life, but
we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten
our punishments at school, and how we grieved when our mar
bles were lost and our kites destroyed — because we have for
gotten all the sorrows and privations of that canonized epoch
and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden sword pa
geants and its fishing holydays. We are satisfied. We can
wait. Our reward will come. To us, Jerusalem and to-day's
experiences will be an enchanted memory a year hence — a
memory which money could not buy from us.
OHAPTEE LV.
"TTT^E cast up the account. It footed up pretty fairly.
V V There was nothing more at Jerusalem to be seen, ex
cept the traditional houses of Dives and Lazarus of the para
ble, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the Judges ; the
spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and be
headed another ; the room and the table made celebrated by
the Last Supper ; the fig-tree that Jesus withered ; a number
of historical places about Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives,
and fifteen or twenty others in different portions of the city
itself.
We were approaching the end. Human nature asserted it
self, now. Overwork and consequent exhaustion began to
have their natural effect. They began to master the energies
and dull the ardor of the party. Perfectly secure now, against
failing to accomplish any detail of the pilgrimage, they felt
like drawing in advance upon the holy day soon to be placed to
their credit. They grew a little lazy. They were late to
breakfast and sat long at dinner. Thirty or forty pilgrims had
arrived from the ship, by the short routes, and much swapping
of gossip had to be indulged in. And in hot afternoons, they
showed a strong disposition to lie on the cool divans in the
hotel and smoke and talk about pleasant experiences of a
month or so gone by — for even thus early do episodes of travel
which were sometimes annoying, sometimes exasperating and
full as often of no consequence at all when they transpired,
begin to rise above the dead level of monotonous reminiscences
and become shapely landmarks in one's memory. The fog-
CHARMS OF NOMADIC LIFE. 587
whistle, smothered among a million of trifling sounds, is not no
ticed a block away, in the city, but the sailor hears it far at sea,
whither none of those thousands of trifling sounds can reach.
When one is in Rome, all the domes are alike ; but when he has
gone away twelve miles, the city fades utterly from sight and
leaves St. Peter's swelling above the level plain like an an
chored balloon. When one is traveling in Europe, the daily
incidents seem all alike ; but when he has placed them all two
months and two thousand miles behind him, those that were
worthy of being remembered are prominent, and those that
were really insignificant have vanished. This disposition to
smoke, and idle and talk, was not well. It was plain that it
must not be allowed to gain ground. A diversion must be
tried, or demoralization would ensue. The Jordan, Jericho
and the Dead Sea were suggested. The remainder of Jeru
salem must be left unvisited, for a little while. The journey
was approved at once. New life stirred in every pulse. In
the saddle — abroad on the plains — sleeping in beds bounded
only by the horizon : fancy was at work with these things in a
moment. — It was painful to note how readily these town-bred
men had taken to the free life of the camp and the desert.
The nomadic instinct is a human instinct ; it was born with
Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs, and after thirty
centuries of steady effort, civilization has not educated it en
tirely out of us yet. It has a charm which, once tasted, a man
will yearn to taste again. The nomadic instinct can not be
educated out of an Indian at all.
The Jordan journey being approved, our dragoman was no
tified.
At nine in the morning the caravan was before the hotel
door and we were at breakfast. There was a commotion about
the place. Rumors of war and bloodshed were flying every
where. The lawless Bedouins in the Valley of the Jordan and
the deserts down by the Dead Sea were up in arms, and were
going to destroy all comers. They had had a battle with a
troop of Turkish cavalry and defeated them ; several men
killed. They had shut up the inhabitants of a village and a
588 DISMAL RUMORS.
Turkish garrison in an old fort near Jericho, and were be
sieging them. They had marched upon a camp of our excur
sionists by the Jordan, and the pilgrims only saved their lives
by stealing away and flying to Jerusalem under whip and spur
in the darkness of the night. Another of our parties had been
fired on from an ambush and then attacked in the open day.
Shots were fired on both sides. Fortunately there was no
bloodshed. We spoke with the very pilgrim who had fired
one of the shots, and learned from his own lips how, in this
imminent deadly peril, only the cool courage of the pilgrims,
their strength of numbers and imposing display of war mate
rial, had saved them from utter destruction. It was reported
that the Consul had requested that no more of our pilgrims
should go to the Jordan while this state of things lasted ; and
further, that he was unwilling that any more should go, at least
without an unusually strong military guard. Here was
trouble. But with the horses at the door and every body
aware of what they were there for, what would you have done ?
Acknowledged that you were afraid, and backed shamefully
out ? Hardly. It would not be human nature, where there
were so many women. You would have done as we did : said
you were not afraid of a million Bedouins — and made your
will and proposed quietly to yourself to take up an unostenta
tious position in the rear of the procession.
I think we must all have determined upon the same line of
tactics, for it did seem as if we never would get to Jericho. I
had a notoriously slow horse, but somehow I could not keep
him in the rear, to save my neck. He was forever turning up
in the lead. In such cases I trembled a little, and got down
to fix my saddle. But it was not of any use. The others all
got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time
with saddles. It was the first time any of them had got out
of order in three weeks, and now they had all broken down at
once. I tried walking, for exercise — I had not had enough in
Jerusalem searching for holy places. But it was a failure.
The whole mob were suffering for exercise, and it was not fifteen
LAZARUS.
589
minutes till they were all on foot and I had the lead again. It
was very discouraging.
AN EPIDEMIC.
This was all after we got beyond Bethany. "We stopped at
the village of Bethany, an hour out from Jerusalem. They
showed us the tomb of Lazarus. I had rather live in it than
in any house in the town. And they showed us also a large
" Fountain of Lazarus," and in the centre of the village the
ancient dwelling of Lazarus. Lazarus appears to have been a
man of property. The legends of the Sunday Schools do him
great injustice; they give one the impression that he was poor.
It is because they get him confused with that Lazarus who had
no merit but his virtue, and virtue never has been as respect
able as money. The house of Lazarus is a three-story edifice,
of stone masonry, but the accumulated rubbish of ages has
buried all of it but the upper story. We took candles and de
scended to the dismal cell-like chambers where Jesus sat at
meat with Martha and Mary, and conversed with them about
their brother. We could not but look upon these old dingy
apartments with a more than common interest.
590
BEDOUINS.
We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead
Sea, lying like a blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and
now we were marching down a close, naming, rugged, desolate
defile, where no living creature could enjoy life, except, per
haps, a salamander. It was such a dreary, repulsive, horrible
solitude ! It was the " wilderness " where John preached,
with camel's hair about his loins — raiment enough — but he
never could have got his locusts and wild honey here. We
were moping along down through this dreadful place, every
man in the rear. Our guards — two gorgeous young Arab
sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns, pistols and daggers on
board — were loafing ahead.
" Bedouins !"
Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a
mud-turtle. My
first impulse was
to dash forward
and destroy the
Bedouins. My
second was to
dash to the rear
to see if there
were any coming
in that direction.
I acted on the
latter impulse.
So did all the
others. If any
Bedouins had
approached us,
then, from that
point of the
compass, they
would have paid
dearly for their
rashness. We
all remarked
that, afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and
CHARGE ON BEDOUINS.
BEDOUINS. 591
bloodshed there that no pen could describe. I know that, be
cause each man told what he would have done, individually ;
and such a medley of strange and unheard-of inventions of
cruelty you could not conceive of. One man said he had
calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need be,
but never yield an inch ; he was going to wait, with deadly
patience, till he could count the stripes upon the first Be
douin's jacket, and then count them and let him have it. An
other was going to sit still till the first lance reached within an
inch of his breast, and then dodge it and seize it. I forbear
to tell what he wras going to do to that Bedouin that owned it.
It makes my blood run cold to think of it. Another was
going to scalp such Bedouins as fell to his share, and take his
bald-headed sons of the desert home with him alive for
trophies. But the wild-eyed pilgrim rhapsodist was silent.
His orbs gleamed with a deadly light, but his lips moved not.
Anxiety grew, and he was questioned. If he had got a Be
douin, what would he have done with him — shot him ? He
smiled a smile of grim contempt and shook his head. Would
he have stabbed him ? Another shake. Would he have quar
tered him — flayed him ? More shakes. Oh ! horror, what
would he have done ?
" Eat him !"*
Such was the awful sentence that thundered from his lips.
"What wras grammar to a desperado like that ? I was glad in
my heart that I had been spared these scenes of malignant
carnage. No Bedouins attacked our terrible rear. And none
attacked the front. The new-comers were only a reinforce
ment of cadaverous Arabs, in shirts and bare legs, sent far
ahead of ITS to brandish rusty guns, and shout and brag, and
carry on like lunatics, and thus scare away all bands of ma
rauding Bedouins that might lurk about our path. What a
shame it is that armed white Christians must travel under
guard of vermin like this as a protection against the prowling
vagabonds of the desert — those sanguinary outlaws who are
always going to do something desperate, but never do it. I
may as well mention here that on our whole trip we saw no
592 THE NIGHT MARCH.
Bedouins, and had no more use for an Arab guard than we
could have had for patent leather boots and white kid gloves.
The Bedouins that attacked the other parties of pilgrims so
fiercely were provided for the occasion by the Arab guards of
those parties, and shipped from Jerusalem for temporary ser
vice as Bedouins. They met together in full view of the pil
grims, after the battle, and took lunch, divided the bucksheesh
extorted in the season of danger, and then accompanied the
cavalcade home to the city ! The nuisance of an Arab guard
is one which is created by the Sheiks and the Bedouins to
gether, for mutual profit, it is said, and no doubt there is a
good deal of truth in it.
We visited the fountain the prophet Elisha sweetened (it is
sweet yet ;) where he remained some time and was fed by the
ravens.
Ancient Jericho is not very picturesque as a ruin. When
Joshua marched around it seven times, some three thousand
years ago, and blew it down with his trumpet, he did the work
so well and so completely that he hardly left enough of the
city to cast a shadow. The curse pronounced against the re
building of it, has never been removed. One King, holding
the curse in light estimation, made the attempt, but was
stricken sorely for his presumption. Its site will always
remain unoccupied ; and yet it is one of the very best locations
for a town we have seen in all Palestine.
At two in the morning they routed us out of bed — another
piece of unwarranted cruelty — another stupid effort of our
dragoman to get ahead of a rival. It was not two hours to the
Jordan. However, we were dressed and under way before any
one thought of looking to see what time it was, and so we
drowsed on through the chill night air and dreamed of camp
fires, warm beds, and other comfortable things.
There was no conversation. People do not talk when they
are cold, and wretched, and sleepy. We nodded in the saddle,
at times, and woke up with a start to find that the procession
had disappeared in the glooin. Then there was energy and
attention to business until its dusky outlines came in sight
"ON JORDAN'S STORMY BANKS." 593
again. Occasionally the order was passed in a low voice down
the line : " Close up — close up ! Bedouins lurk here, every
where !" "What an exquisite shudder it sent shivering along
one's spine !
We reached the famous river before four o'clock, and the
night was so black that we could have ridden into it without
seeing it. Some of us were in an unhappy frame of mind.
We waited and waited for daylight, but it did not come. Fi
nally we went away in the dark and slept an hour on the
ground, in the bushes, and caught cold. It was a costly nap,
on that account, but otherwise it was a paying investment
because it brought unconsciousness of the dreary minutes and
put us in a somewhat fitter mood for a first glimpse of the
sacred river.
With the first suspicion of dawn, every pilgrim took off his
clothes and waded into the dark torrent, singing :
" On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie."
But they did not sing long. The water was so fearfully cold
that they were obliged to stop singing and scamper out again.
Then they stood on the bank shivering, and so chagrined and
so grieved, that they merited honest compassion. Because an
other dream, another cherished hope, had failed. They had
promised themselves all along that they would cross the Jordan
where the Israelites crossed it when they entered Canaan from
their long pilgrimage in the desert. They would cross where
the twelve stones were placed in memory of that great event.
While they did it they would picture to themselves that vast
army of pilgrims marching through the cloven waters, bearing
the hallowed ark of the covenant and shouting hosannahs, and
singing songs of thanksgiving and praise. Each had promised
himself that he would be the first to cross. They were at the
goal of their hopes at last, but the current was too swift, the
water was too cold !
38
594
THE DEAD SEA.
It was then that Jack did them a service. With that engag
ing recklessness of consequences which is natural to youth,
and so proper and so seemly, as well, he went and led the way
across the Jordan, and all was happiness again. Every indi
vidual waded over, then, and stood upon the further bank.
The water was not quite breast deep, any where. If it had
been more, we could hardly have accomplished the feat, for the
strong current would have swept us down the stream, and we
would have been exhausted and drowned before reaching a
place where we could make a landing. The main object com
passed, the drooping, miserable party sat down to wait for the
sun again, for all wanted to see the water as well as feel it.
But it was too cold a pastime. Some cans were filled from the
holy river, some canes cut from its banks, and then we mount
ed and rode reluctantly away to keep from freezing to death.
So we saw the Jordan very dimly. The thickets of bushes
that bordered its banks threw their shadows across its shallow,
turbulent waters (" stormy," the hymn makes them, which is
rather a complimentary stretch of fancy,) and we could not
judge of the width of the stream by the eye. We knew by
our wading experience, however, that many streets in America
are double as wide as the Jordan.
Daylight came, soon after we got under way, and in the
course of an hour or
two we reached the
Dead Sea. Nothing
grows in the flat,
burning desert
around it but weeds
and the Dead Sea
apple the poets say
is beautiful to the
eye, but crumbles to
ashes and dust when
you break it. Such
as we found were not
handsome, but they were bitter to the taste. They yielded no
dust. It was because they were not ripe, perhaps.
THE HEAD SEA.
THE DEAD SEA. 595
The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun,
around the Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living
creature upon it or about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a
scorching, arid, repulsive solitude. A silence broods over the
scene that is depressing to the spirits. It makes one think of
funerals and death.
The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it
has a pebbly bottom and is shallow for some distance out from
the shores. It yields quantities of asphaltum ; fragments of it
lie all about its banks ; this stuff gives the place something of
an unpleasant smell.
All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge
into the Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results
— our bodies would feel as if they were suddenly pierced by
millions of red-hot needles ; the dreadful smarting would con
tinue for hours ; we might even look to be blistered from head
to foot, and suffer miserably for many days. We were disap
pointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another
party of pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of
them ever did complain of any thing more than a slight prick
ing sensation in places where their skin was abraded, and then
only for a short time. My face smarted for a couple of hours,
but it was partly because I got it badly sun-burned while I was
bathing, and staid in so long that it became plastered over
with salt.
No, the water did not blister us ; it did not cover us with a
slimy ooze and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance ; it was
not very slimy ; and I could not discover that we smelt really
any worse than we have always smelt since we have been in
Palestine. It was only a different kind of smell, but not con
spicuous on that account, because we have a great deal of va
riety in that respect. We didn't smell, there on the Jordan,
the same as we do in Jerusalem ; and we don't smell in Jeru
salem just as we did in Nazareth, or Tiberias, or Cesarea Phi-
lippi, or any of those other ruinous ancient towns in Galilee.
No, we change all the time, and generally for the worse. We
do our own washing.
596 THE DEAD SEA.
It was a funny bath. We could not sink. One could stretch
himself at full length on his back, with his arms on his breast,
and all of his body above a line drawn from the corner of his
jaw past the middle of his side, the middle of his leg and
through his ancle bone, would remain out of water. He could
lift his head clear out, if he chose. No position can be retain
ed long; you lose your balance and whirl over, first on
your back and then on your face, and so on. You can lie com
fortably, on your back, with your head out, and your legs out
from your knees down, by steadying yourself with your hands.
You can sit, with your knees drawn up to your chin and your
arms clasped around them, but you are bound to turn over
presently, because you are top-heavy in that position. You
can stand up straight in water that is over your head, and from
the middle of your breast upward you will not be wet. But
you can not remain so. The water will soon float your feet to
the surface. You can not swim on your back and make any
progress of any consequence, because your feet stick away
above the surface, and there is nothing to propel yourself with
but your heels. If you swim on your face, you kick up the
water like a stern-wheel boat. You make no headway. A
horse is so top-heavy that he can neither swim nor stand up in
the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side at once. Some of
us bathed for more than an hour, and then came out coated
with salt till we shone like icicles. We scrubbed it off with a
coarse towel and rode off with a splendid brand-new smell,
though it was one which was not any more disagreeable than
those we have been for several weeks enjoying. It was the
variegated villainy and novelty of it that charmed us. Salt
crystals glitter in the sun about the shores of the lake. In
places they coat the ground like a brilliant crust of ice.
When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the
river Jordan was four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles
wide. It is only ninety miles long, and so crooked that a man
does not know which side of it he is on half the time. In
going ninety miles it does not get over more than fifty miles
of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New York.
THE HERMITS OF MARS SABA. 597
There is the Sea of Galilee and this Dead Sea — neither of them
twenty miles long or thirteen wide. And yet when I was in
Sunday School I thought they were sixty thousand miles in
diameter.
Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us
of the most cherished traditions of our boyhood. Well, let
them go. I have already seen the Empire of King Solomon
diminish to the size of the State of Pennsylvania ; I suppose
I can bear the reduction of the seas and the river.
We looked every where, as we passed along, but never saw
grain or crystal of Lot's wife. It was a great disappointment.
For many and many a year we had known her sad story, and
taken that interest in her which misfortune always inspires.
But she was gone. Her picturesque form no longer looms
above the desert of the Dead Sea to remind the tourist of the
doom that fell upon the lost cities.
I can not describe the hideous afternoon's ride from the
Dead Sea to Mars Saba. It oppresses me yet, to think of it.
The sun so pelted us that the tears ran down our cheeks once
or twice. The ghastly, treeless, grassless, breathless canons
smothered us as if we had been in an oven. The sun had
positive weight to it, I think. Not a man could sit erect under
it. All drooped low in the saddles. John preached in this
" Wilderness !" It must have been exhausting work. What
a very heaven the massy towers and ramparts of vast Mars
Saba looked to us when we caught a first glimpse of them !
We staid at this great convent all night, guests of the hos
pitable priests. Mars Saba, perched upon a crag, a human
nest stuck high up against a perpendicular mountain wall, is
a world of grand masonry that rises, terrace upon terrace away
above your head, like the terraced and retreating colonnades
one sees in fanciful pictures of Belshazzar's Feast and the pal
aces of the ancient Pharaohs. No other human dwelling is
near. It was founded many ages ago by a holy recluse who
lived at first in a cave in the rock — a cave which is inclosed in
the convent walls, now, and was reverently shown to us by the
priests. This recluse, by his rigorous torturing of his flesh,
598 GOOD ST. SABA.
liis diet of bread and water, his utter withdrawal from all so
ciety and from the vanities of the world, and his constant
prayer and saintly contemplation of a skull, inspired an emu
lation that brought about him many disciples. The precipice
on the opposite side of the canon is well perforated with the
small holes they dug in the rock to live in. The present occu
pants of Mars Saba, about seventy in number, are all hermits.
They wear a coarse robe, an iigly, brimless stove-pipe of a hat,
and go without shoes. They eat nothing whatever but bread
and salt ; they drink nothing but water. As long as they live
they can never go outside the wralls, or look upon a w^oman —
for no woman is permitted to enter Mars Saba, upon any pre
text whatsoever.
Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years.
In all that dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a
child or the blessed voice of a woman ; they have seen no
human tears, no human smiles ; they have known no human
joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts are no
memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future.
All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away
from them ; against all things that are pleasant to look upon,
and all sounds that are music to the ear, they have barred
their massive doors and reared their relentless walls of stone
forever. They have banished the tender grace of life and left
only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips are lips that
never kiss and never sing ; their hearts are hearts that never
hate and never love ; their breasts are breasts that never swell
with the sentiment, " I have a country and a flag." They are
dead men who walk.
I set down these first thoughts because they are natural—
not because they are just or because it is right to set them
down. It is easy for book-makers to say " I thought so and so
as I looked upon such and such a scene" — when the truth
is, they thought all those fine things afterwards. One's first
thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet it is no crime
to think it and none to write it down, subject to modification
by later experience. These hermits are dead men, in several
UNSELFISH CATHOLIC BENEVOLENCE. 599
respects, but not in all ; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill
of them at first, I should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of
them I should reiterate the words and stick to them. No, they
treated us too kindly for that. There is something human
about them somewhere. They knew we were foreigners and
Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much friend
liness toward them. But their large charity was above consid
ering such things. They simply saw in us men who were
hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and that was sufficient. They
opened their doors and gave us welcome. They asked no ques
tions, and they made no self-righteous display of their hospi-
pitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved
quietly about, setting the table for us, making the beds, and
bringing water to wash in, and paid no heed when we said it
was wrong for them to do that when we had men whose busi
ness it was to perform such offices. We fared most comfort
ably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building
with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battle
ments and smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild
scenery and the sunset. One or two chose cosy bed-rooms to
sleep in, but the nomadic instinct prompted the rest to sleep
on the broad divan that extended around the great hall, be
cause it seemed like sleeping out of doors, and so was more
cheery and inviting. It was a royal rest we had.
When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new
men. For all this hospitality no strict charge was made. We
could give something if we chose ; we need give nothing, if
we were poor or if we were stingy. The pauper and the miser
are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of Palestine. I
have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is Cath
olic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much
easier to discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But
there is one thing I feel no disposition to overlook, and no dis
position to forget : and that is, the honest gratitude I and all
pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers in Palestine. Their
doors are always open, and there is always a welcome for any
worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in
600 PLAIN OF THE SHEPHERDS.
purple. The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the
poor. A pilgrim without money, whether he be a Protestant
or a Catholic, can travel the length and breadth of Palestine,
and in the midst of her desert wastes find wholesome food and
a clean bed every night, in these buildings. Pilgrims in better
circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and the
fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Con
vent. Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine
would be a pleasure wrhich none but the strongest men could
dare to undertake. Our party, pilgrims and all, will always
be ready and always willing, to touch glasses and drink health,
prosperity and long life to the Convent Fathers of Palestine.
So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away
over the barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges
and through sterile gorges, where eternal silence and solitude
reigned. Even the scattering groups of armed shepherds we
met the afternoon before, tending their flocks of lorg-haired
goats, were wanting here. We saw but two living creatures.
They were gazelles, of " soft-eyed " notoriety. They looked
like very young kids, but they annihilated distance like an ex
press train. I have not seen animals that moved faster, unless
I might say it of the antelopes of our own great plains.
At nine or ten in the morning we reached the Plain of the
Shepherds, and stood in a walled garden of olives where the
shepherds were watching their flocks by night, eighteen centu
ries ago, wThen the multitude of angels brought them the
tidings that the Saviour was born. A quarter of a mile away
was Bethlehem of Judea, and the pilgrims took some of the
stone wall and hurried on.
The Plain of the Shepherds is a desert, paved with loose
stones, void of vegetation, glaring in the fierce sun. Only the
music of the angels it knew once could charm its shrubs and
flowrers to life again and restore its vanished beauty. No less
potent enchantment could avail to work this miracle.
Tn the huge Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen
hundred years ago by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us
below ground, and into a grotto cut in the living rock. This was
THE FAMOUS UMILK GROTTO." 601
the " manger " where Christ was born. A silver star set in the
floor bears a Latin inscription to that effect. It is polished
with the kisses of many generations of worshiping pilgrims.
The grotto was tricked out in the usual tasteless style observ
able in all the holy places of Palestine. As in the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent
here. The priests and the members of the Greek and Latin
Churches can not come by the same corridor to kneel in the
sacred birthplace of the Redeemer, but are compelled to ap
proach and retire by different avenues, lest they quarrel and
fight on this holiest ground on earth.
I have no " meditations," suggested by this spot where the
very first " Merry Christmas !" was uttered in all the world,
and from whence the friend of my childhood, Santa Claus, de
parted on his first journey, to gladden and continue to gladden
roaring firesides on wintry mornings in many a distant land
forever and forever. I touch, with reverent finger, the actual
spot where the infant Jesus lay, but I think — nothing.
You can not think in this place any more than you can in
any other in Palestine that would be likely to inspire reflection.
Beggars, cripples and monks compass you about, and make
you think only of bucksheesh when you would rather think of
something more in keeping with the character of the spot.
I was glad to get away, and glad when we had walked
through the grottoes where Eusebius wrote, and Jerome fasted,
and Joseph prepared for the flight into Egypt, and the dozen
other distinguished git>ttoes, and knew we were done. The
Church of the Nativity is almost as well packed with exceed
ing holy places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself.
They even have in it a grotto wherein twenty thousand chil
dren were slaughtered by Herod when he was seeking the life
of the infant Saviour.
We went to the Milk Grotto, of course — a cavern where
Mary hid herself for a while before the flight into Egypt. Its
walls were black before she entered, but in suckling the Child,
a drop of her milk fell upon the floor and instantly changed
the darkness of the walls to its own snowy hue. We took
602 EXHAUSTED.
many little fragments of stone from here, because it is well
known in all the East that a barren woman hath need only to
touch her lips to one of these and her failing will depart from
her. AVe took many specimens, to the end that we might con
fer happiness upon certain households that we wot of.
We got away from Bethlehem and its troops of beggars and
relic-peddlers in the afternoon, and after spending some little
time at Rachel's tomb, hurried to Jerusalem as fast as possible.
I never was so glad to get home again before. I never have
enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed it during these last few hours.
The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and Bethlehem was
short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat, such
oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely
exist elsewhere on earth. And such fatigue !
The commonest sagacity warns me that I ought to tell the
customary pleasant lie, and say I tore myself reluctantly away
from every noted place in Palestine. Every body tells that,
but with as little ostentation as I may, I doubt the word of
every he who tells it. I could take a dreadful oath that I have
never heard any one of our forty pilgrims say any thing of the
sort, and they are as worthy and as sincerely devout as any
that come here. They will say it when they get home, fast
enough, but why should they not ? They do not wish to array
themselves against all the Lamartines and Grimeses in the
world. It does not stand to reason that men are reluctant to
leave places where the very life is almost badgered out of them
by importunate swarms of beggars and peddlers who hang in
strings to one's sleeves and coat-tails and shriek and shout in
his ears and horrify his vision with the ghastly sores and mal
formations they exhibit. One is glad to get away. I have
heard shameless people say they were glad to get away from
Ladies' Festivals where they were importuned to buy by bevies
of lovely young ladies. Transform those houris into dusky
hags and ragged savages, and replace their rounded forms with
shrunken and knotted distortions, their soft hands with scarred
and hideous deformities, and the persuasive music of their
voices with the discordant din of a hated language, and then
AFTER THOUGHTS. 603
see how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered.
No, it is the neat thing to say you were reluctant and then
append the profound thoughts that " struggled for utterance,"
in your brain ; but it is the true thing to say you were not
reluctant, and found it impossible to think at all — though in
good sooth it is not respectable to say it, and not poetical,
either.
We do not think, in the holy places ; we think in bed, after
wards, when the glare, and the noise, and the confusion are
gone, and in fancy wre revisit alone, the solemn monuments of
the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that
has passed away.
CHAPTEE LYI.
~\TTE visited all the holy places about Jerusalem which we
* » had left unvisited when we journeyed to the Jordan,
and then, about three o'clock one afternoon, we fell into pro
cession and marched out at the stately Damascus gate, and the
walls of Jerusalem shut us out forever. We paused on the
summit of a distant hill and took a final look and made a final
farewell to the venerable city which had been such a good
home to us.
For about four hours we traveled down hill constantly.
We followed a narrow bridle-path which traversed the beds of
the mountain gorges, and when we could we got out of the
way of the long trains of laden camels and asses, and when we
could not wre suffered the misery of being mashed up against
perpendicular walls of rock and having our legs bruised by the
passing freight. Jack was caught two or three times, and Dan
and Moult as often. One horse had a heavy fall on the slip
pery rocks, and the others had narrow escapes. However,
this was as good a road as we had found in Palestine, and pos
sibly even the best, and so there was not much grumbling.
Sometimes, in the glens, we came upon luxuriant orchards
of figs, apricots, pomegranates, and such things, but oftener
the scenery was rugged, mountainous, verdureless and forbid
ding. Here and there, towers were perched high up on accliv
ities which seemed almost inaccessible. This fashion is as
old as Palestine itself and was adopted in ancient times for se
curity against enemies.
We crossed the brook which furnished David the stone that
i
THE PILGHIMAGE ENDED. 605
killed Goliah, and no doubt we looked upon the very ground
whereon that noted battle was fought. We passed by a
picturesque old gothic ruin whose stone pavements had rung
to the armed heels of many a valorous Crusader, and we rode
through a piece of country which we were told once knew
Samson as a citizen.
We staid all night with the good monks at the convent
of Ramleh, and in the morning got up and galloped the horses
a good part of the distance from there to Jaffa, or Joppa, for
the plain was as level as a floor and free from stones, and
besides this was our last march in Holy Land. These two
or three hours finished, we and the tired horses could have rest
and sleep as long as we wanted it. This was the plain of
which Joshua spoke when he said, " Sun, stand thou still on
Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon." As we drew
near to Jaffa, the boys spurred up the horses and indulged in
the excitement of an actual race — an experience we had hardly
had since we raced on donkeys in the Azores islands.
We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which
the Oriental city of Jaffa lies buried ; we passed through the
walls, and rode again down narrow streets and among swarms
of animated rags, and saw other sights and had other experi
ences we had long been familiar with. We dismounted, for
the last time, and out in the offing, riding at anchor, we saw
the ship ! I put an exclamation point there because we felt
one when we saw the vessel. The long pilgrimage was ended,
and somehow we seemed to feel glad of it.
[For description of Jaffa, see Universal Gazetteer.] Simon
the Tanner formerly lived here. We went to his house. All
the pilgrims visit Simon the Tanner's house. Peter saw the
vision of the beasts let down in a sheet when he lay upon the
roof of Simon the Tanner's house. It was from Jaffa that
Jonah sailed when he was told to go and prophesy against
Nineveh, and no doubt it was not far from the town that the
whale threw him up when he discovered that he had no ticket.
Jonah was disobedient, and of a fault-finding, complaining dis
position, and deserves to be lightly spoken of, almost. The
606 INFORMATION ABOUT JAFFA.
timbers used in the construction of Solomon's temple were
floated to Jaffa in rafts, and the narrow opening in the reef
through which they passed to the shore is not an inch wider or
a shade less dangerous to navigate than it was then. Such is
the sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only good sea
port has now and always had. Jaffa has a history and a stir
ring one. It will not be discovered any where in this book. If
the reader will call at the circulating library and mention my
name, he will be furnished with books which will afford him
the fullest information concerning Jaffa.
So ends the pilgrimage. We ought to be glad that we did
not make it for the purpose of feasting our eyes upon fascina
ting aspects of nature, for we should have been disappointed —
at least at this season of the year. A writer in " Life in the
Holy Land " observes :
" Monotonous and uninviting as much of the Holy Land will appear to persons
accustomed to the almost constant verdure of flowers, ample streams and varied sur
face of our own country, we must remember that its aspect to the Israelites after
the weary march of forty years through the desert must have been very different.''
"Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is " monoto
nous and uninviting," and there is no sufficient reason for de
scribing it as being otherwise.
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Pales
tine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of
color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are un
sightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an ex
pression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead
Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch
of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint,
no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or
mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is
harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective — dis
tance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary,
heart-broken land.
Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the
full flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by
1
PRESENT PALESTINE. 607
contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them
on every side. I would like much to see the fringes of the
Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem, Esdraelon, Ajalon and
the borders of Galilee — but even then these spots would seem
mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a limit
less desolation.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the
spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its en
ergies. "Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and
towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter
waters no living thing exists — over whose waveless surface the
blistering air hangs motionless and dead — about whose borders
nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that
treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips,
but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn ; about
that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the
Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid
camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert ; Jericho the accursed,
lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it
more than three thousand years ago ; Bethlehem and Bethany,
in. their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about
them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor
of the Saviour's presence ; the hallowed spot where the shep
herds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang
Peace on earth, good will to men, is un tenanted by any living
creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the
eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history,
has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper vil
lage ; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the
admiration of visiting Oriental queens ; the wonderful tem
ple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and
the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that
most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared
the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman
fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed
in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war
and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness ; Caper-
608 PRESENT PALESTINE.
naum is a shapeless ruin ; Magdala is the home of beggared
Arabs ; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth,
and the " desert places" round about them where thousands of
men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous
bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by
birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be
otherwise ? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land ?
Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred
to poetry and tradition — it is dream-land.
OHAPTEE LVII.
IT was worth a kingdom to be at sea again. It was a relief
to drop all anxiety whatsoever — all questions as to where
we should go ; how long we should stay ; whether it were worth
while to go or not ; all anxieties about the condition of the
horses ; all such questions as " Shall we ever get to water?"
" Shall we ever lunch ?" " Ferguson, how many more million
miles have we got to creep under this awful sun before we
camp ?" It was a relief to cast all these torturing little anxieties
far away — ropes of steel they were, and every one with a separate
and distinct strain on it — and feel the temporary contentment
that is born of the banishment of all care and responsibility.
We did not look at the compass : we did not care, now, where
the ship went to, so that she went out of sight of land as quickly
as possible. When I travel again, I wish to go in a pleasure
ship. No amount of money could have purchased for us, in a
strange vessel and among unfamiliar faces, the perfect satis
faction and the sense of being at home again- which we expe
rienced when we stepped on board the " Quaker City," — our
own ship — after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a something
we have felt always when we returned to her, and a something
we had no desire to sell.
We took off our blue woollen shirts, our spurs, and heavy
boots, our sanguinary revolvers and our buckskin-seated panta
loons, and got shaved and came out in Christian costume once
more. All but Jack, who changed all other articles of his
dress, but clung to his traveling pantaloons. They still pre
served their ample buckskin seat intact ; and so his short pea-
jacket and his long, thin legs assisted to make him a pictu-
39
610
FATHERLY ADVICE.
resque object whenever he stood on the forecastle looking abroad
upon the ocean over the bows. At such times his father's last
injunction suggested itself to me. He said :
" Jack, my boy, you are about to go among a brilliant com
pany of gentlemen and ladies, who are refined and cultivated,
and thoroughly accomplished in the manners and customs of
good society. Listen to their conversation, study their habits
of life, and learn. Be polite and obliging to all, and considerate
towards every one's opinions, failings and prejudices. Command
the just respect of all your fellow-voyagers, even though you
fail to win their friendly regard. And Jack — don't you ever
dare, while you live, appear in public on those decks in fair
weather, in a costume unbecoming your mother's drawing-
room !"
It would have been
worth any price if the
father of this hopeful
youth could have stepped
on board some time, and
seen him standing high
on the fore-castle, pea-
jacket, tasseled red fez,
buckskin patch and all,
— placidly contemplat
ing the ocean — a rare
spectacle for any body's
drawing-room.
After a pleasant voyage
and a good rest, we drew
near to Egypt and out of
the mellowest of sunsets
we saw the domes and
minarets of Alexandria
rise into view. As soon
as the anchor was down,
Jack and I got a boat and went ashore. It was night by this
time, and the other passengers were content to remain at home
REAR ELEVATION OF JACK.
IN EGYPT.
611
and visit ancient Egypt after breakfast. It was the way they
did at Constantinople. They took a lively interest in new
countries, but their school-boy impatience had worn off, and
they had learned that it was wisdom to take things easy and
go along comfortably — these old countries do not go away in
the night ; they stay till after breakfast.
When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian
boys with donkeys no larger than themselves, waiting for pas
sengers — for donkeys are the omnibuses of Egypt. We pre
ferred to walk, but we could not have our own way. The
boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their
donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we
turned. They were good-natured rascals, and so were the
donkeys. We mounted, and the boys ran behind us and kept
the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the fashion at Damascus.
STREET IN ALEXANDRIA.
I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any beast in the
world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile, though
612
ADVENT OF THE LOST TRIBES.
opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is con
venient — very convenient. When you are tired riding you can
rest your feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you.
We found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to
know that the Prince of Wales had stopped there once. They
had it everywhere on signs. No other princes had stopped
there since, till Jack and I came. We wrent abroad through
the town, then, and found it a city of huge commercial build
ings, and broad, handsome streets brilliant with gas-light. By
night it was a sort of reminiscence of Paris. But finally Jack
found an ice-cream saloon, and that closed investigations for
that evening. The weather was very hot, it had been many a
day since Jack had seen ice-cream, and so it was useless to
talk of leaving the saloon till it shut up.
In the morning the lost tribes of America came ashore and
infested the hotels and took possession of all the donkeys and
other open barouches that offered. They went in picturesque
procession to the American Consul's ; to the great gardens ; to
Cleopatra's Needles ; to
Pompey's Pillar ; to the
palace of the Viceroy of
Egypt ; to the Nile ; to
the superb groves of date-
palms. One of our most
inveterate relic-hunters
had his hammer with
him, and tried to break a
fragment off the upright
Needle and could not do
it ; he tried the prostrate
one and failed; he bor
rowed a heavy sledge
hammer from a mason
and failed again. He
VICEROY OF EGYPT. . ? V>m J
tried Pompey s Pillar, and
this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith were
sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as
THE RELIC-HUNTER. 613
hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of live
thousand years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter
battered at these persistently, and sweated profusely over his
work. lie might as well have attempted to deface the
moon. They regarded him serenely with the stately smile
they had worn so long, and which seemed to say, " Peck
away, poor insect ; we were not made to fear such as you ;
in ten-score dragging ages we have seen more of your kind
than there are sands at your feet : have they left a blemish
upon us?"
But I am forgetting the Jaffa Colonists. At Jaffa we had
taken on board some forty members of a very celebrated com
munity. They were male and female ; babies, young boys and
young girls ; young married people, and some who had passed a
shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the " Adams Jaffa
Colony." Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr.
Adams, his wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no
money but did not know where to turn or whither to go. Such
was the statement made to 'us. Our forty were miserable
enough in the first place, and they lay about the decks seasick
all the voyage, which about completed their misery, I take it.
However, one or two young men remained upright, and by
constant persecution we wormed out of them some little infor
mation. They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary
condition, for, having been shamefully humbugged by their
prophet, they felt humiliated and unhappy. In such circum
stances people do not like to talk.
The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that
such as could get away did so, from time to time. The
prophet Adams — once an actor, then several other things, after
ward a Mormon and a missionary, always an adventurer — re
mains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful subjects. The
forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though
not all of them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might
become of them then they did not know and probably did not
care — any thing to get away from hated Jaffa. They had little
to hope for. Because after many appeals to the sympathies of
614
THE JAFFA COLONISTS.
New England, made by strangers of Boston, through the news
papers, and after the establishment of an office there for the
reception of moneyed contributions for the Jaffa colonists,
One Dollar was sub
scribed. The consul-
general for Egypt
showed me the news-
paper paragraph
which mentioned the
circumstance and men
tioned also the discon
tinuance of the effort
and the closing of the
office. It was evident
that practical New
England was not sorry
to be rid of such vis
ionaries and was not
in the least inclined
EASTERN MONARCH. t0 nirG anj b°dj tO
bring them back to
her. Still, to get to Egypt, was something, in the eyes of the
unfortunate colonists, hopeless as the prospect seemed of ever
getting further.
Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our
ship. One of our passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New
York Sun, inquired of the consul-general what it would cost
to send these people to their home in Maine by the way of
Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in gold would
do it. Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the
troubles of the Jaffa colonists were at an end.*
Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel,
and we soon tired of it. We took the cars and came up here
* It was an unselfish act of benevolence ; it was done without any ostentation,
and has never been mentioned in any newspaper, I think. Therefore it is refresh
ing to learn now, several months after the above narrative was written, that
another man received all the credit of this rescue of the colonists. Such is life.
THE GIFTED PORTER.
615
MOSES S. BEACH.
to ancient Cairo, which is an Oriental city and of the com-
pletest pattern. There is little about it to disabuse one's mind
of the error if he should
take it into his head that
he was in the heart of Ara
bia. Stately camels and
dromedaries, swarthy
Egyptians, and likewise
Turks and black Ethio
pians, turbaned, sashed,
and blazing in a rich va
riety of Oriental costumes
of all shades of flashy
colors, are what one sees
on every hand crowding
the narrow streets and
the honeycombed ba
zaars. We are stopping
at Shepherd's Hotel,
which is the worst on earth except the one I stopped at once
in a small town in the United States. It is pleasant to read
this sketch in my note-book, now, and know that I can stand
Shepherd's Hotel, sure, because I have been in one just like it
in America and survived :
I stopped at the Benton House. It used to be a good hotel, but that proves
nothing — I used to be a good boy, for that matter. Both of us have lost character
of late years. The Benton is not a good hotel. The Benton lacks a very great
deal of being a good hotel. Perdition is full of better hotels than the Benton.
It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would like plenty
of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two. When I reached No. 15 with
the porter (we came along a dim hall that was clad in ancient carpeting, faded,
worn out in many places, and patched with old scraps of oil cloth — a hat that sank
under one's feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light — two
inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sput
tered, and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit, it again, and I asked if that
was all the light the clerk sent. He said, " Oh no, I've got another one here," and:
he produced another couple of inches of tallow candle. I said, "Light them both
— I'll have to have one to see the other by." He did it, but the result was drearier
than darkness itself. He was a cheery, accgtm.modatiug. rascal. He said he would
616 THE GIFTED PORTER.
go " somewheres " and steal a lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in his criminal
design. I heard the landlord get after him in the hall ten minutes afterward.
"Where are you going with that lamp?"
" Fifteen wants it, sir."
"Fifteen ! why he's got a double lot of candles — does the mnn want to illumi
nate the house ? — does he want to get up a torch-light procession ? — what is he up
to, anyhow?"
" He don't like them candles — says he wants a lamp."
" "Why what in the nation does — why I never heard of such a thing? What on
earth can he want with that lamp ?"
" Well, he only wants to read — that's what he says."
"Wants to read, does he? — ain't satisfied with a thousand candles, but has to
have a lamp ! — I do wonder what the devil that fellow wants that lamp for ? Take
him another candle, and then if "
" But he wants the lamp — says he'll burn the d — d old house down if he don't
get a lamp!" (a remark which I never made.)
" I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along — but I swear it beats
my time, though — and see if you can't find out what in the very nation he wants
with that lamp."
And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and wondering over the
unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was a good one, but it revealed some
disagreeable things — a bed in the suburbs of a desert of room — a bed that had hills
and valleys in it, and you'd have to accommodate your body to the impression left
in it by the man that slept there last, before you could lie comfortably ; a carpet
that had seen better days ; a melancholy washstand in a remote corner, and a de
jected pitcher on it sorrowing over a broken nose ; a looking-glass split across the
centre, which chopped your head off at the chin and made you look like some
dreadful unfinished monster or other; the paper peeling in shreds from the walls.
I sighed and said : " This is charming ; and now don't you think you could get
me something to read ?"
The porter said, "Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead loads of books;" and he
was gone before I could tell him what sort of literature I would rather have. And
yet his countenance expressed the utmost confidence in his ability to execute the
commission with credit to himself. The old man made a descent on him.
"What are you going to do with .that pile of books?"
" Fifteen wants 'em, sir."
" Fifteen, is it ? He'll want a warming-pan, next— he'll want a nurse ! Take
him every thing there is in the house — take him the bar-keeper — take him the bag
gage-wagon — take him a chamber-maid ! Confound me, I never saw any thing like
it. What did he say he wants with those books ?"
" Wants to read 'em, like enough ; it ain't likely he wants to eat 'em, I don't
.reckon."
"Wants to read 'em — wants to read 'em this time of night, the infernal lunatic!
Well,. he can't have them."
" But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em ; he says he'll just go a-rairin' and
a-chargin' through this house and raise more well, there's no tellin' what he
THE GIFTED PORTER.
617
won't do if he don't get 'em ; because he's drunk and crazy and desperate, and
nothing'll soothe him down but them cussed books." [I had not made any threats,
and was not in the condi
tion ascribed to mo by the
porter.]
"Well, goon; but I will
be around when he goesvto
rairing and charging, and
the first rair he makes I'll
make him rair out of the
window." And then the
old gentleman went off,
growling as before.
The genius of that por
ter was something won
derful. He put an armful
of books on the bed and
said " Good night " as con
fidently as if he knew per
fectly well that those books
were exactly my style of ROOM N0 15
reading matter. And well
he might. His selection covered the whole range of legitimate literature. It com
prised "The Great Consummation," by Rev. Dr. Cummings — theology; "Revised
Statutes of the State of Missouri" — law; "The Complete Horse-Doctor" — medi
cine; "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo — romance; "The works of
William Shakspeare " — poetry. I shall never cease to admire the tact and the
intelligence of that gifted porter.
But all the donkeys in Christendom, and most of the Egyp
tian boys, I think, are at the door, and there is some noise
going on, not to put it in stronger language. — We are about
starting to the illustrious Pyramids of Egypt, and the donkeys
for the voyage are under inspection. I will go and select one
before the choice animals are all taken.
CHAPTEE LYIII.
HE donkeys were all good, all handsome, all strong and in
good condition, all fast and all willing to prove it. They
were the best we had found any where, and the most recherche.
I do not know what recherche is, but that is what these donkeys
were, anyhow. Some were of a soft mouse-color, and the
others were white, black, and vari-colored. Some were close-
shaven, all over, except that a tuft like a paint-brush was left
on the end of the tail. Others were so shaven in fanciful land
scape garden patterns, as to mark their bodies with curving
lines, which were bounded on one side by hair and on the other
by the close plush left by the shears. They had all been newly
barbered, and were exceedingly stylish. Several of the white
ones were barred like zebras with rainbow stripes of blue and
red and yellow paint. These were indescribably gorgeous. Dan
and Jack selected from this lot because they brought back Ital
ian reminiscences of the " old masters." The saddles were the
high, stuffy, frog-shaped things we had known in Ephesus and
Smyrna. The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian ras
cals who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half
a day without tiring. "We had plenty of spectators when we
mounted, for the hotel was full of English people bound over
land to India and officers getting ready for the African cam
paign against the Abyssinian King Theodoras. We were not
a very large party, but as we charged through the streets of the
great metropolis, we made noise for five hundred, and dis
played activity and created excitement in proportion. Nobody
can steer a donkey, and some collided with camels, dervishes,
A WILD HIDE. 619
effendis, asses, beggars and every thing else that offered to the
donkeys a reasonable chance for a collision. When we turned
into the broad avenue that leads out of the city toward Old
Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls of stately date-
palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way, threw
their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We
rose to the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a
stampede, a terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again.
Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibi
tions of Oriental simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years
of age came along the great thoroughfare dressed like Eve be
fore the fall. We would have called her thirteen at home ;
but here girls who look thirteen are often not more than
nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of su
perb build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment.
However, an hour's acquaintance with this cheerful custom
reconciled the pilgrims to it, and then it ceased to occasion
remark. Thus easily do even the most startling novelties grow
tame and spiritless to these sight-surfeited wanderers.
Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the don
keys and tumbled them bodily aboard a small boat with a la
teen sail, and we followed and got under way. The deck was
closely packed with donkeys and men ; the two sailors had to
climb over and under and through the wedged mass to work
the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or five donkeys
out of the way when he wished to swing his tiller and put his
helm hard-down. But what were their troubles to us ? We
had nothing to do ; nothing to do but enjoy the trip ; nothing
to do but shove the donkeys off our corns and look at the charm
ing scenery of the Nile.
On the island at our right was the machine they call the Ki
lometer, a stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of
the river and prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two
feet and produce a famine, or whether it will properly flood
the land at forty and produce plenty, or whether it will rise
to forty-three and bring death and destruction to flocks and
crops — but how it does all this they could not explain to us so
620
MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES.
that we could understand. On the same island is still shown
the spot where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bul
rushes. Near the spot we
sailed from, the Holy Fam
ily dwelt when they so
journed in Egypt till Her
od should complete his
slaughter of the innocents.
The same tree they rested
under when they tirst ar
rived, was there a short
time ago, but the Viceroy
of Egypt sent it to the Em
press Eugenie lately. He
was just in time, otherwise
our pilgrims would have
had it.
The Nile at this point is
muddy, swift and turbid,
and does not lack a great
deal of being as wide as the
Mississippi.
We scrambled up the
steep bank at the shabby
town of Ghizeh, mounted
the donkeys again, and
scampered away. For four
or five miles the route lay
along a high embankment which they say is to be the bed of
a railway the Sultan means to build for no other reason than
that when the Empress of the French comes to visit him she
can go to the Pyramids in comfort. This is true Oriental hos
pitality. I am very glad it is our privilege to have donkeys
instead of cars.
At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the
palms, looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and
very soft and filmy, as well. They swam in a rich haze that
KILOMETER.
DISTANT VIEW OF THE PYRAMIDS. 621
took from them all suggestions of unfeeling stone, and made
them seem only the airy nothings of a dream — structures
which might blossom into tiers of vague arches, or ornate col
onnades, may be, and change and change again, into all grace
ful forms of architecture, while we looked, and then melt deli-
ciously away and blend with the tremulous atmosphere.
At the end of the levee we left the mules and went in a sail
boat across an arm of the Nile or an overflow, and landed
where the sands of the Great Sahara left their embankment,
as straight as a wall, along the verge of the alluvial plain of
the river. A laborious walk in the flaming sun brought us to
the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. It was a fairy vision
no longer. It was a corrugated, unsightly mountain of stone.
Each of its monstrous sides was a wide stairway which rose
upward, step above step, narrowing as it went, till it tapered
to a point far aloft in the air. Insect men and women — pil
grims from the Quaker City — were creeping about its dizzy
perches, and one little black swarm were waving postage
stamps from the airy summit — handkerchiefs will be under
stood.
Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular Egyp
tians and Arabs who wanted the contract of dragging us to the
top — all tourists are. Of course you could not hear your own
voice for the din that was around you. Of course the Sheiks
said they were the only responsible parties ; that all contracts
must be made with them, all moneys paid over to them, and
none exacted from us by any but themselves alone. Of course
they contracted that the varlets who dragged us up should not
mention bucksheesh once. For such is the usual routine. Of
course we contracted with them, paid them, were delivered into
the hands of the draggers, dragged up the Pyramids, and har
ried and be-deviled for bucksheesh from the foundation clear to
the summit. We paid it, too, for we were purposely spread
very far apart over the vast side of the Pyramid. There was
no help near if we called, and the Herculeses who dragged us
had a way of asking sweetly and flatteringly for bucksheesh,
which was seductive, and of looking fierce and threatening to
622
THE ASCENT.
throw us down the precipice, which was persuasive and con
vincing.
Each step being full as high as a dinner-table ; there being
very, very many of the steps ; an Arab having hold of each of
our arms and springing upward from step to step and snatch
ing us with them, forcing us to lift our feet as high as our breasts
every time, and do it rapidly and keep it up till we were ready
to faint, who shall say it is not lively, exhilarating, lacerating,
muscle-straining, bone-wrenching and perfectly excruciating
and exhausting pastime, climbing the Pyramids ? I beseeched
the varlets not to twist all my joints asunder ; I iterated, reit
erated, even swore to them that I did not wish to beat any body
to the top ; did all I could to convince them that if I got there
the last of all I would feel
blessed above men and
grateful to them forever ;
I begged them, prayed
them, pleaded with them
to let me stop and rest a
moment — only one little
moment: and they only
answered with some more frightful springs, and an unenlisted
volunteer behind opened a bombardment of determined boosts
ASCENT OF THE PYRAMID.
THE ASCENT. 623
with his head which threatened to batter my whole political
economy to wreck and ruin.
Twice, for one minute, they let me rest while they extorted
bucksheesh, and then continued their maniac flight up the Pyr
amid. They wished to beat the other parties. It was nothing
to them that I, a stranger, must be sacrificed upon the altar of
their unholy ambition. But in the midst of sorrow, joy blooms.
Even in this dark hour I had a sweet consolation. For I knew
that except these Mohammedans repented they would go
straight to perdition some day. And they never repent — they
never forsake their paganism. This thought calmed me,
cheered me, and I sank down, limp and exhausted, upon the
summit, but happy, so happy and serene within.
On the one hand, a mighty sea of yellow sand stretched
away toward the ends of the earth, solemn, silent, shorn of veg
etation, its solitude uncheered by any forms of creature life ;
on the other, the Eden of Egypt was spread below us — a broad
green floor, cloven by the sinuous river, dotted with villages,
its vast distances measured and marked by the diminishing
stature of receding clusters of palms. It lay asleep in an en
chanted atmosphere. There was no sdund, no motion. Above
the date-plumes in the middle distance, swelled a domed and
pinnacled mass, glimmering through a tinted, exquisite mist ;
away toward the horizon a dozen shapely pyramids watched
over ruined Memphis : and at our feet the bland impassible
Spliynx looked out upon the picture from her throne in the
sands as placidly and pensively as she had looked upon its like
full fifty lagging centuries ago.
"We suffered torture no pen can describe from the hungry ap
peals for bucksheesh that gleamed from Arab eyes and poured
incessantly from Arab lips. Why try to call up the traditions
of vanished Egyptian grandeur ; why try to fancy Egypt fol
lowing dead Rameses to his tomb in the Pyramid, or the long
multitude of Israel departing over the desert yonder ? Why
try to think at all ? The thing was impossible. One must
bring his meditations cut and dried, or else cut and dry them
afterward.
624 AX ARAB EXPLOIT.
The traditional Arab proposed, in the traditional way, to run
down Cheops, cross the eighth of a mile of sand intervening
between it and the tall pyramid of Cephron, ascend to Ceph-
ron's summit and return to us on the top of Cheops — all in
nine minutes by the watch, and the whole sen-ice to be ren
dered for a single dollar. In the first flush of irritation, I said
let the Arab and his exploits go to the mischief. But stay.
The upper third of Cephron was coated with dressed marble,
smooth as glass. A blessed thought entered my brain. He
must infallibly break his neck. Close the contract with dis
patch, I said, and let him go. He started. We watched. He
went bounding down the vast broadside, spring after spring,
like an ibex. He grew small and smaller till he became a
bobbing pigmy, away down toward the bottom — then disap
peared. We turned and peered over the other side — forty sec
onds — eighty seconds — a hundred — happiness, he is dead al
ready ! — two minutes — and a quarter — " There he goes !" Too
true — it was too true. He was very small, now. Gradually,
but surely, he overcame the level ground. He began to spring
and climb again. Up, up, up — at last he reached the smooth
coating — now for it. But he clung to it with toes and fingers,
like a fly. He crawled this way and that — away to the right,
slanting upward — away to the left, still slanting upward — and
stood at last, a black peg on the summit, and waved his pigmy
scarf! Then he crept downward to the raw steps again, then
picked up his agile heels and flew. We lost him presently.
But presently again we saw him under us, mounting with un-
diminished energy. Shortly he bounded into our midst with a
gallant war-whoop. Time, eight minutes, forty-one seconds.
He had won. His bones were intact. It was a failure. I re
flected. I said to myself, he is tired, and must grow dizzy. I
will risk another dollar on him.
He started again. Made the trip again. Slipped on the
smooth coating — I almost had him. But an infamous crevice
saved him. He was with us once more — perfectly sound.
Time, eight minutes, forty-six seconds.
AX ARAB EXPLOIT.
625
I said to Dan, " Lend me a dollar — I can beat this game, yet."
Worse and worse. He won again. Time, eight minutes,
forty -eight seconds. I was out of all patience, now. I was
desperate. — M o n e y
was no longer of any
consequence. I said,
" Sirrah, I will give
you a hundred dol
man HOPES FRUSTRATED. lai'S tO jlllllp off this
pyramid head first.
If you do not like the terms, name your bet. I scorn to stand
on expenses now. I will stay right here and risk money on
you as long as Dan has got a cent."
I was in a fair way to win, now, for it was a dazzling oppor
tunity for an Arab. He pondered a moment, and would have
clone it, I think, but his mother arrived, then, and interfered.
Her tears moved me — I never can look upon the tears of
woman with indifference — and I said I would give her a hun
dred to jump off, too.
But it was a failure. The Arabs are too high-priced in
Egypt. They put on airs unbecoming to such savages.
626 INSIDE THE PYRAMID.
We descended, hot and out of humor. The dragoman lit
candles, and we all entered a hole near the- base of the pyra
mid, attended by a crazy rabble of Arabs who thrust their ser
vices upon us uninvited. They dragged us up a long inclined
chute, and dripped candle-grease all over us. This chute was
not more than twice as wide and high as a Saratoga trunk,
and was walled, roofed and floored with solid blocks of Egyp
tian granite as wide as a wardrobe, twice as thick and three
times as long. We kept on climbing, through the oppressive
gloom, till I thought we ought to be Hearing the top of the pyr
amid again, and then came to the u Queen's Chamber," and
shortly to the Chamber of the King. These large apartments
were tombs. The walls were built of monstrous masses of
smoothed granite, neatly joined together. Some of them were
nearly as large square as an ordinary parlor. A great stone
sarcophagus like a bath-tub stood in the centre of the King's
Chamber. Around it were gathered a picturesque group of
Arab savages and soiled and tattered pilgrims, who held their
candles aloft in the gloom while they chattered, and the winking
blurs of light shed a dim glory down upon one of the irrepres
sible memento-seekers who was pecking at the venerable sar
cophagus with his sacrilegious hammer.
"We struggled out to the open air and the bright sunshine,
and for the space of thirty minutes received ragged Arabs by
couples, dozens and platoons, and paid them bucksheesh for
services they swore and proved by each other that they had
rendered, but which we had not been aware of before — and as
each party was paid, they dropped into the rear of the proces
sion and in due time arrived again with a newly-invented de
linquent list for liquidation.
We lunched in the shade of the pyramid, and in the midst
of this encroaching and unwelcome company, and then Dan
and Jack and I started away for a walk. A howling swarm of
beggars followed us — surrounded us — almost headed us off. A
sheik, iri flowing white bournous and gaudy head-gear, was
with them. He wanted more bucksheesh. But we had adopted
a new code — it was millions for defense, but not a cent for
STRATEGY.
627
bucksheesh. I asked him if he could persuade the others to de
part if we paid him. lie said yes — for ten francs. We ac
cepted the contract, and said—
" Xow persuade your vassals to fall back."
He swung his long staff round his head and three Arabs
bit the dust. lie capered among the mob like a very maniac.
His blows fell like hail, and wherever one fell a subject
went down. We had to hurry to the rescue and tell him
it was only
necessary to
damage them a
little, he need
not kill them. —
In two minutes
we were alone
with the sheik,
and remained
so. The per
suasive powers
of this illiter
ate savage
were remark
able.
Each side of the Pyramid of Cheops is about as long as the
Capitol at Washington, or the Sultan's new palace on the Bos
porus, and is longer than the greatest depth of St. Peter's at
Rome — which is to say that each side of Cheops extends seven
hundred and some odd feet It is about seventy-five feet
higher than the cross on St. Peter's. The first time I ever
went down the Mississippi, I thought the highest bluff on the
river between St. Louis and New Orleans — it was near Selma,
Missouri — was probably the highest mountain in the world.
It is four hundred and thirteen feet high. It still looms in my
memory with nndiminished grandeur. I can still see the trees
and bushes growing smaller and smaller as I followed them up
its huge slant with my eye, till they became a feathery fringe
on the distant summit. This symmetrical Pyramid of Cheops
A POWERFUL ARGUMENT.
628 YOUTHFUL REMINISCENCES.
— this solid mountain of stone reared by the patient hands of
men — this mighty tomb of a forgotten monarch — dwarfs my
cherished mountain. For it is four hundred and eighty feet
high. In still earlier years than those I have been recalling,
Holliday's Hill, in our town, was to me the noblest' work of
God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was nearly three
hundred feet high. In those days I pondered the subject
much, but I never could understand why it did not swathe its
summit with never-failing clouds, and crown its majestic brow
with everlasting snows. I had heard that such was the custom
of great mountains in other parts of the world. I remembered
how I worked with another boy, at odd afternoons stolen from
study and paid for with stripes, to undermine and start from its
bed an immense boulder that rested upon the edge of that hill
top ; I remembered how, one Saturday afternoon, we o;ave
three hours of honest effort to the task, and saw at last that our
reward was at hand ; I remembered how wre sat down, then, and
wiped the perspiration away, and waited to let a picnic party
get out of the way in the road below — and then we started the
boulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the hill
side, tearing iip saplings, mowing bushes down like grass,
ripping and crushing and smashing every thing in its path —
eternally splintered and scattered a wood pile at the foot of the
hill, and then sprang from the high bank clear over a dray in
the road — the negro glanced up once and dodged — and the next
second it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame cooper-shop,
and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said it wras
perfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers wrere
starting up the hill to inquire.
Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothing to the
Pyramid of Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison that
would convey to my mind a satisfactory comprehension of the
magnitude of a pile of monstrous stones that covered thirteen
acres of ground and stretched upward four hundred and eighty
tiresome feet, and so I gave it up and walked dowrn to the
Sphynx. v
After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great
THE MAJESTIC SPHYNX. 629
face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was
a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a be
nignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone,
but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was
thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape,
yet looking at nothing — nothing but distance and vacancy. It
was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and
far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time —
over lines of ^century-waves which, further and further reced
ing, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into
one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote anti
quity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages ; of the
empires it had seen created and destroyed ; of the nations
whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched,
whose annihilation it had noted ; of the joy and sorrow, the
life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow
revolving years. It was the type of an attribute of man — of a
faculty of his heart and brain. It was MEMOKY — RETROSPEC
TION — wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know
what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished
and faces that have vanished — albeit only a trifling score of
years gone by — will have some appreciation of the pathos that
dwells in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon
ttye things they knew before History was born — before Tradi
tion had being — things that were, and forms that moved, in a
vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of — and
passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in
the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.
The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness ; it is imposing in its
magnitude ; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its
story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this
eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds
of all ages, which reveals to one something of what he shall
feel when he shall stand at last in the awful presence of God.
There are some things which, for the credit of America,
should be left unsaid, perhaps ; but these very things happen
sometimes to be the very things which, for the real benefit of
630
THE MAJESTIC SPHYNX.
Americans, ought to have prominent notice. While we stood
looking, a wart, or an excrescence of some kind, appeared on the
jaw of the Sphynx. We heard the familiar clink of a hammer,
and understood
the case at once.
One of our well-
meaning reptiles
— I mean relic-
h u n t e r s — h a d
crawled up there
and was trying to
break a " speci
men " from the
face of this the
most majestic cre
ation the hand of
man has wrought.
But the great im
age contemplated
the dead ages as
THE RELIC-HUNTER.
calmly
as ever.
unconscious of
the small insect that was fretting at its jaw. Egyptian granite
that has defied the storms and earthquakes of all time has
nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of ignorant excursion
ists — highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his en
terprise. .We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had the
authority, or to warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of
Egypt the crime he was attempting to commit was punishable
with imprisonment or the bastinado. Then he desisted and
went away.
The Sphynx : a hundred and twenty-five feet long, sixty feet
high, and a hundred and two feet around the head, if I remember
rightly — carved out of one solid block of stone harder than any
iron. The block must have been as large as the Fifth Avenue
Hotel before the usual waste (by the necessities of sculpture) of a
fourth or a half of the original mass was begun. I only set
THINGS I SHALL NOT TELL.
631
down these figures and these remarks to suggest the prodigious
labor the carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically, so fault
lessly, must have cost. This species of stone is so hard that fig
ures cut in it remain sharp and unmarred after exposure to the
weather for two or three thousand years. Now did it take a
hundred years of patient toil to carve the Sphynx ? It seems
probable.
Something interfered, and we did not visit the Red Sea and
walk upon the sands of Arabia. I shall not describe the great
mosque of Mehemet Ali, whose entire inner walls are built of
polished and glistening alabaster ; I shall not tell how the lit
tle birds have built their nests in the globes of the great chan
deliers that hang in the
mosque, and how they fill
the whole place with their
music and' are not afraid
of any body because their
audacity is pardoned, their
rights are respected, and
nobody is allowed to inter
fere with them, even
though the mosque be thus
doomed to go unlighted ; I
certainly shall not tell the
hackneyed story of the
massacre of the Mame
luke's, because I am glad
the lawless rascals were
massacred, and I do not
wish to* get up any sympa
thy in their behalf; I shall
not tell how that one soli
tary Mameluke jumped his horse a hundred feet down from
the battlements of the citadel and escaped, because I do
not think much of that — I could have done it myself; I shall
not tell of Joseph's well which he dug in the solid rock of the
citadel hill and which is still as good as new, nor how the
THE MAMELUKES LEAP.
632 THINGS I SHALL NOT TELL.
same mules lie bought to draw up the water (with an endless
chain) are still at it yet and are getting tired of it, too ; I shall
not tell about Joseph's granaries which he built to store the
grain in, what time the Egyptian brokers were " selling short,"
unwitting that there would be no corn in all the land when
it should be time for them to deliver ; I shall not tell any thing
about the strange, strange city of Cairo, because it is only a re
petition, a good deal intensified and exaggerated, of the Orien
tal cities I have already spoken of; I shall not tell of the Great
Caravan which leaves for Mecca every year, for I did not see
it ; nor of the fashion the people have of prostrating them
selves and so forming a long human pavement to be ridden
over by the chief of the expedition on its return, to the end
that their salvation may be thus secured, for I did not see that
either ; I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other
railway — I shall only say that the fuel they use for the loco
motive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, pur
chased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and
that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettish
ly, "D — n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent — pass
out a King ;"* I shall not tell of the groups of mud cones
stuck like wasps' nests upon a thousand mounds above high
water-mark the length and breadth of Egypt — villages of the
lower classes ; I shall not speak of the boundless sweep of level
plain, green with luxuriant grain, that gladdens the eye as far
as it can pierce through the soft, rich atmosphere of Egypt ; I
shall not speak of the vision of the Pyramids seen at a distance
of five and twenty miles, for the picture is too ethereal to be
limned by an uninspired pen ; I shall not tell of the crowds of
dusky women who flocked to the cars when they stopped a
moment at a station, to sell us a drink of water or a ruddy,
juicy pomegranate ; I shall not tell of the motley multitudes
and wild costumes that graced a fair we found in full blast at
another barbarous station ; I shall not tell how we feasted on
fresh dates and enjoyed the pleasant landscape all through the
* Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it
I can believe any thing.
GRAND OLD EGYPT.
633
flying journey ; nor how we thundered into Alexandria, at
last, swarmed out of the cars, rowed aboard the ship, left a
comrade behind, (who was to return to Europe, thence home,)
raised the anchor, and turned our bows homeward finally and
forever from the long voyage ; nor how, as the mellow sun went
down upon the oldest land on earth, Jack and Moult assem
bled in solemn state in the smoking-room and mourned over
the lost comrade the whole night long, and would not be com
forted. I shall not speak a word of any of these things, or write
a line. They shall be as a sealed book. I do not know what a
sealed book is, because I never saw one, but a sealed book is the
expression to use in this connection, because it is popular.
We were glad to have seen the land which was the mother
of civilization — which taught Greece her letters, and through
, Greece Rome, and through
Rome the world ; the land
which could have human
ized and civilized the hap
less children of Israel,, but
allowed them to depart out
of her borders little better
than savages. We were glad
to have seen that land which
had an enlightened religion
with future eternal rewards
and punishment in it, while
even Israel's religion con
tained no promise of a here
after. We were glad to have
seen that land which had
glass three thousand years before Eng
land had it, and could paint upon it as
none of us can paint now ; that land
wllich kn6W> tllrG6
WOULD NOT BE COMFORTED.
ago, well nigh all of medicine and
surgery which science has discovered lately; which had all
those curious surgical instruments which science has invented
634
GRAND OLD EGYPT.
recently ; which had in high excellence a thousand luxuries
and necessities of an advanced civilization which we have
gradually contrived and accumulated in modern times and
claimed as things that were new under the sun; that had
paper untold centuries before we dreampt of it — and water
falls before our women thought of them ; that had a perfect
system of common schools so long before we boasted of our
achievements in that direction that it seems forever and forever
ago ; that so embalmed the dead that flesh was made almost im
mortal — which we can not do ; that built temples which rnock
at destroying time and smile grimly upon our lauded little pro
digies of architecture ; that old land that knew all which we
O '
know now, perchance, and more ; that walked in the broad
highway of civilization in the gray dawn of creation, ages and
ages before we were born ; that left the impress of exalted, cul
tivated Mind upon the eternal front of the Sphynx to confound
all scoffers who, when all her other proofs had passed away,
might seek to persuade the world that imperial Egypt, in the
days of her high renown, had groped in darkness.
CHAPTEE LIX.
~TT~TE were at sea now, for a very long voyage — we were to
V V pass through the entire length of the Levant ; through
the entire length of the Mediterranean proper, also, and then
cross the full width of the Atlantic — a voyage of several weeks.
HOMEWARD BOUND.
We naturally settled down into a very slow, stay-at-home man
ner of life, and resolved to be quiet, exemplary people, and
roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more, at least,
than from stem to stern of the ship. It was a very comfort
able prospect, though, for we were tired and needed a long
rest.
636 NOTE-BOOKS AT SEA.
We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries
in my note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition,)
prove. What a stupid thing a note-book gets to be at sea, any
way. Please observe the style :
" Sunday — Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night, also. No cards.
" Monday — Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased at Alexandria
for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened. The water stands in deep pud
dles in the depressions forward of their after shoulders. Also here and there all
over their backs. It is well they are not cows — it would soak in and ruin the
milk. The poor devil eagle* from Syria looks miserable and droopy in the rain,
perched on the forward capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea
voyage, and if it were put into language and the language solidified, it would prob
ably essentially dam the widest river in the world.
" Tuesday — Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta, Can not stop
there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers seasick and invisible.
" Wednesday — Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land birds to sea, and
they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also. He circled round and round
the ship, wanting to light, but afraid of the people. He was so tired, though, that
he had to light, at last, or perish. He stopped in the foretop, repeatedly, and was
as often blown away by the wind. At last Harry caught him. Sea full of %ing-
fish. They rise in flocks of three hundred and flash along above the tops of the
waves a distance of two or three hundred feet, then fall and disappear.
" Thursday — Anchored off Algiers, Africa. Beautiful city, beautiful green hilly
landscape behind it. Staid half a day and left. Not permitted to land, though we
showed a clean bill of health. They were afraid of Egyptian plague and cholera.
"Friday — Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading
the deck. Afterwards, charades.
" Saturday — Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading
the decks. Afterwards, dominoes.
" Sunday — Morning service, four bells. Evening service, eight bells. Monotony
till midnight. — Whereupon, dominoes.
"Monday — Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading
the decks. Afterward, charades and a lecture from Dr. C. Dominoes.
" No date — Anchored off' the picturesque city of Cagliari, Sardinia. Staid till
midnight, but not permitted to land by these infamous foreigners. They smell in-
odorously — they do not wash — they dare not risk cholera.
" Thursday — Anchored off the beautiful cathedral city of Malaga, Spain. — Went
ashore in the captain's boat — not ashore, either, for they would not let us land.
Quarantine. Shipped my newspaper correspondence, which they took with tongs,
dipped it in sea water, clipped it full of holes, and then fumigated it with vil
lainous vapors till it smelt like a Spaniard. Inquired about chances to run the
blockade and visit the Alhambra at Granada. Too risky — they might hang a
body. Set sail — middle of afternoon.
* Afterwards presented to the Central Park.
A BOY'S DIARY. 637
" And so on, and so on, and so forth, for several days. Finally, anchored off
Gibraltar, which looks familiar and home-like."
It reminds me of the journal I opened with the New Year,
once, when I was a boy and a confiding and a willing prey to
those impossible schemes of reform which well-meaning old
maids and grandmothers set for the feet of unwary youths at
that season of the year — setting oversized tasks for them,
which, necessarily failing, as infallibly weaken the boy's
strength of will, diminish his confidence in himself and injure
his chances of success in life. Please accept of an extract :
" Monday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
" Tuesday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
" Wednesday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
" Thursday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
" Friday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
" Next Friday — Got up, washed, went to bed.
11 Friday fortnight — Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Following month — Got up, washed, went to bed."
I stopped, then, discouraged. Startling events appeared to
be too rare, in my career, to render a diary necessary. I still
reflect with pride, however, that even at that early age I
washed when I got up. That journal finished me. I never
have had the nerve to keep one since. My loss of confidence
in myself in that line was permanent.
The ship had to stay a week or more at Gibraltar to take in
coal for the home voyage.
It would be very tiresome staying here, and so four of us
ran the quarantine blockade and spent seven delightful days
in Seville, Cordova, Cadiz, and wandering through the pleas
ant rural scenery of Andalusia, the garden of Old Spain.
The experiences of that cheery week were too varied and nu
merous for a short chapter and I have not room for a long one.
Therefore I shall leave them all out.
CHAPTEE LX.
TJZN or eleven o'clock found us coming down to breakfast
one morning in Cadiz. They told us the ship had been
lying at anchor in the harbor two or three hours. It was time
for us to bestir ourselves. The ship could wait only a little
while because of the quarantine. We were soon on board, and
within the hour the white city and the pleasant shores of Spain
sank down behind the waves and passed out of sight. "We had
seen no land fade from view so regretfully.
It had long ago been decided in a noisy public meeting in
the main cabin that we could not go to Lisbon, because we
must surely be quarantined there. We did every thing by
mass-meeting, in the good old national way, from swapping off
one empire for another on the programme of the voyage down
to complaining of the cookery and the scarcity of napkins. I
am reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery
made by a passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing
more and more execrable for the space of three weeks, till at
last it had ceased to be coffee altogether and had assumed the
nature of mere discolored water — so this person said. He said
it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in depth around
the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning
he saw the transparent edge — by means of his extraordinary
vision — long before he got to his seat. He went back and
complained in a high-handed way to Capt. Duncan. He said
the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed his. It seemed
tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged
than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown
GLIMPSE OF MADEIRA.
639
the captain's table over the other tables in the ship. He
flourished back and got his cup and set it down triumphantly,
and said :
" Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan."
He smelt it — tasted it — smiled benign an tly — then said :
" It is inferior — for coffee — but it is pretty fair tea."
The humbled
mutineer smelt
it, tasted it, and
returned to his
seat. He had
made an egre
gious ass of him
self before the
whole ship. He
did it no more.
After that he
took things as
they came. That
was me.
The old-fash
ioned ship-life COFFEE-
had returned, now that we were no longer in sight of land. For
days and days it continued just the same, one day being ex
actly like another, and, to me, every one of them pleasant.
At last we anchored in the open roadstead of Funchal, in the
beautiful islands we call the Madeiras.
The mountains looked surpassingly lovely, clad as they were
in living green ; ribbed with lava ridges ; flecked with white
cottages ; riven by deep chasms purple with shade ; the great
slopes dashed with sunshine and mottled with shadows flung
from the drifting squadrons of the sky, and the superb picture
fitly crowned by towering peaks whose fronts were swept by
the trailing fringes of the clouds*.
But we could not land. We staid all day and looked, we
abused the man who invented quarantine, we held half a dozen
mass-meetings and crammed them full of interrupted speeches,
640
THE PLEASANT BERMUDAS.
motions that fell still-born, amendments that came to nought
and resolutions that died from sheer exhaustion in trying to
get before the house. At night we set sail.
We averaged four mass-meetings a week for the voyage —
we seemed always in labor in this way, and yet so often falla
ciously that whenever at long intervals we were safely deliv
ered of a resolution, it was cause for public rejoicing, and we
hoisted the flag and fired a salute.
Days passed — and nights ; and then the beautiful Bermudas
"OUR FRIENDS, THE BERMUDIANS."
rose out of the sea, we entered the tortuous channel, steamed
hither and thither among the bright summer islands, and rested
at last under the flag of England and were welcome. We were
not a nightmare here, where Vere civilization and intelligence
in place of Spanish and Italian superstition, dirt and dread of
cholera. A few days among the breezy groves, the flower gar-
OUR FIRST ACCIDENT.
6-il
dens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that
went curving in and out, disappearing and anon again appear
ing through jungle walls of brilliant foliage, restored the ener
gies dulled by long drowsing on the ocean, and fitted us for our
final cruise — our little run of a thousand miles to New York
—America — HOME.
We bade good-bye to " our friends the Bermudians," as our
programme hath it — the majority of those we were most inti
mate with were negroes — and courted the great deep again.
I said the majority. We knew more negroes than white peo
ple, because wre had a deal of washing to be done, but we made
some most excellent friends among the whites, whom it will be
a pleasant duty to hold long in grateful remembrance.
We sailed, and from that hour all idling ceased. Such an
other system of overhauling, general littering of cabins and
packing of trunks we
had not seen since we
let go the anchor in the
harbor of Beirout. Ev
ery body was busy. Lists
of all purchases had to
be made out, and values
attached, to facilitate
matters at the custom
house. Purchases bought
by bulk in partnership
had to be equitably di
vided, outstanding debts
canceled, accounts com
pared, and trunks, boxes
and packages labeled.
All day long the bustle
and confusion continued.
And now came our first accident. A passenger was running
through a gangway, between decks, one stormy night, when
he caught his foot in the iron staple of a door that had been
heedlessly left off a hatchway, and the bones of his leg broke
41
CAPT. DUNCAN.
642 AT HOME.
at the ancle. It was our first serious misfortune. We had
traveled much more than twenty thousand miles, by land and
sea, in many trying climates, without a single hurt, without a
serious case of sickness and without a death among five and
sixty passengers. Our good fortune had been wonderful. A
sailor had jumped overboard at Constantinople one night, and
was seen no more, but it was suspected that his object was to
desert, and there was a slim chance, at least, that he reached
the shore. But the passenger list was complete. There was
no name missing from the register.
At last, one pleasant morning, we steamed up the harbor
of New York, all on deck, all dressed in Christian garb — by
special order, for there was a latent disposition in some quar
ters to come out as Turks — and amid a waving of handker
chiefs from welcoming friends, the glad pilgrims noted the
shiver of the decks that told that ship and pier had joined
hands again and the long, strange cruise was over. Amen.
CHAPTER LXI.
~TX this place I will print an article which I wrote for the
-*- New York Herald the night we arrived. I do it partly
because my contract with my publishers makes it compulsory ;
partly because it is a proper, tolerably accurate, and exhaust
ive summing up of the cruise of the ship and the performances
of the pilgrims in foreign lands ; and partly because some of
the passengers have abused me for writing it, and I wish the
public to see how thankless a task it is to put one's self to trouble
to glorify un appreciative people. I was charged with " rush
ing into print " with these compliments. I did not rush. I
had written news letters to the Herald sometimes, but yet when
I visited the office that day I did not say any thing about
writing a valedictory. I did go to the Tribune office to see if
such an article was wanted, because I belonged on the regular
staff of that paper and it was simply a duty to do it. The
managing editor was absent, and so I thought no more about
it. At night when the Herald }s request came for an article, I
did not " rush." In fact, I demurred for a while, because I
did not feel like writing compliments then, and therefore was
afraid to speak of the cruise lest I might be betrayed into
using other than complimentary language. However, I re
flected that it would be a just and righteous thing to go down
and write a kind word for the Hadjis — Hadjis are people who
have made the pilgrimage — because parties not interested
could not do it so feelingly as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned
the valedictory. I have read it, and read it again ; and if
there is a sentence in it that is not fulsomely complimentary to
644 AN OBITUARY.
captain, ship and passengers, /can not find it. If it is not a
chapter that any company might be proud to have a body
write about them, my judgment is fit for nothing. "With these
remarks I confidently submit it to the unprejudiced judgment
of the reader :
EETUEN OF THE HOLY LAND EXCURSIONISTS THE STOKY OF THE
CKUISE.
To THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD:
The steamer Quaker City has accomplished at last her extraordinary voyage
and returned to her old pier at the foot of "Wall street. The expedition was a suc
cess in some respects, in some it was not. Originally it was advertised as a " pleas
ure excursion." Well, perhaps, it was a pleasure excursion, but certainly it did
not look like one ; certainly it did not act like one. Any body's and every body's
notion of a pleasure excursion is that the parties to it will of a necessity be young
and giddy and somewhat boisterous. They will dance a good deal, sing a good
deal, make love, but sermonize very little. Any body's and every body's notion of
a well conducted funeral is that there must be a hearse and a corpse, and chief
mourners and mourners by courtesy, many old people, much solemnity, no levity,
and a prayer and a sermon withal. Three-fourths of the Quaker City's passengers
were between forty and seventy years of age ! There was a picnic crowd for you I
It may be supposed that the other fourth was composed of young girls. But it
was not. It was chiefly composed of rusty old bachelors and a child of six years.
Let us average the ages of the Quaker City's pilgrims and set the figure down as
fifty years. Is any man insane enough to imagine that this picnic of patriarchs
sang, made love, danced, laughed, told anecdotes, dealt in ungodly levity ? In my
experience they sinned little in these matters. No doubt it was presumed here at
home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all day, and day
after day, and kept up a noisy excitement from one end of the ship to the other;
and that they played blind-man's buff or danced quadrilles and waltzes on moon
light evenings on the quarter-deck ; and that at odd moments of unoccupied time
they jotted a laconic item or two in the journals they opened on such an elaborate
plan when they left home, and then skurried off to their whist and euchre labors
under the cabin lamps. If these things were presumed, the presumption was at
fault. The venerable excursionists were not gay and frisky. They played no
blind-man's buff; they dealt not in whist; they shirked not the irksome journal,
for alas ! most of them were even writing books. They never romped, they talked
but little, they never sang, save in the nightly prayer-meeting. The pleasure ship
was a synagogue, and the pleasure trip was a funeral excursion without a corpse.
(There is nothing exhilarating about a funeral excursion without a corpse.) A free,
hearty laugh was a sound that was not heard oftener than once in seven days about
those decks or in those cabins, and when it was heard it met with precious little
sympathy. The excursionists danced, on three separate evenings, long, long ago,
AN OBITUARY. 645
(it seems an age.) quadrilles, of a single set, made up of three ladies and five gen
tlemen, (the latter with handkerchiefs around their arms to signify their sex.) who
timed their feet to the solemn wheezing of a melodeon ; but even this melancholy
orgie was voted to be sinful, and dancing was discontinued.
The pilgrims played dominoes when too much Josephus or Robinson's Holy
Land Researches, or book-writing, made recreation necessary — for dominoes is
about as mild and sinless a game as any in the world, perhaps, excepting always
the ineffably insipid diversion they call croquet, which is a game where you don't
pocket any balls and don't carom on any thing of any consequence, and when you
are done nobody has to pay, and there are no refreshments to saw off, and, conse
quently, there isn't any satisfaction whatever about it — they played dominoes till
they were rested, and then they blackguarded each other privately till prayer-time.
"\Vhen they were not seasick they were uncommonly prompt when the dinner-gong
sounded. Such was our daily life on board the ship — solemnity, decorum, dinner,
dominoes, devotions, slander. It was not lively enough for a pleasure trip ; but if
we had only had a corpse it would have made a noble funeral excursion. It is all
over now ; but when I look back, the idea of these venerable fossils skipping forth
on a six months' picnic, seems exquisitely refreshing. The advertised title of the
expedition — ''The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion" — was a misnomer.
"The Grand Holy Land Funeral Procession" would have been better — much
better.
Wherever we went, in Europe, Asia, or Africa, we made a sensation, and, I sup
pose I may add, created a famine. None of us had ever been any where before ;
we all hailed from the interior ; travel was a wild novelty to us, and we conducted
ourselves in accordance with the natural instincts that were in us, and trammeled
ourselves with no ceremonies, no conventionalities. We always took care to make
it understood that we were Americans — Americans ! When we found that a good
many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a good many more
knew it only as a barbarous province away off somewhere, that had lately been at
war with somebody, we pitied the ignorance of the Old World, but abated no jot
of our importance. Many arid many a simple community in the Eastern hemisphere
will remember for years the incursion of the strange horde in the year of our Lord
1867, that called themselves Americans, and seemed to imagine in some unaccount
able way that they had a right to be proud of it. We generally created a famine,
partly because the coffee on the Quaker City was unendurable, and sometimes the
more substantial fare was not strictly first class ; and partly because one naturally
tires of sitting long at the same board and eating from the same dishes.
The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked cu
riously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed
that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for
expenses, and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where
in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and
stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those
idiots understand their own language. One of our passengers said to a shopkeeper,
in reference to a proposed return to buy a pair of gloves, " Allong restay iranketl —
may be ve coom Moonday ;" and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born
646 AN OBITUARY.
Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said. Sometimes it seems to me,
somehow, that there must be a difference between Parisian French and Quaker
City French.
The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. "We generally
made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them, because we bore
down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them. And yet we took
kindly to the manners and customs, and especially to the fashions of the various
people we visited. "When we left the Azores, we wore awful capotes and used
fine tooth combs — successfully. When we came back from Tangier, in Africa, we
were topped with fezzes of the bloodiest hue, hung with tassels like an Indian's
scalp-lock. In France arid Spain we attracted some attention in these costumes.
In Italy they naturally took us for distempered Garibaldians, and set a gunboat to
look for any thing significant in our changes of uniform. We made Rome howl.
"We could have made any place howl when we had all our clothes on. We got no
fresh raimenf in Greece — they had but little there of any kind. But at Constanti
nople, how we turned out! Turbans, scimetars, fezzes, horse-pistols, tunics, sashes,
baggy trowsers, yellow slippers — Oh, we were gorgeous ! The illustrious dogs of
Constantinople barked their under jaws off, and even then failed to do us justice.
They are all dead by this time. They could not go through such a run of business
as we gave them and survive.
And then we went to see the Emperor of Russia. "We just called on him as
comfortably as if we had known him a century or so, and when we had finished
our visit we variegated ourselves with selections from Russian costumes and sailed
away again more picturesque than ever. In Smyrna we picked up camel's hair
shawls and other dressy things from Persia; but in Palestine — ah, in Palestine —
our splendid career ended. They didn't wear any clothes there to speak of. "We
were satisfied, and stopped. We made no experiments. We did not try their cos
tume. But we astonished the natives of that country. We astonished them with
such eccentricities of dress as we could muster. We prowled through the Holy
Land, from Cesarea Philippi to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a weird procession of
pilgrims, gotten up regardless of expense, solemn, gorgeous, green-spectacled,
drowsing under blue umbrellas, and astride of a sorrier lot of horses, camels and
asses than those that came out of Noah's ark, after eleven months of seasickness
and short rations. If ever those children of Israel in Palestine forget when Gid
eon's Band \vent through there from America, they ought to be cursed once more
and finished. It was the rarest spectacle that ever astounded mortal eyes, perhaps.
Well, we were at home in Palestine. It was easy to see that that was the grand
feature of the expedition. We had cared nothing much about Europe. We gal
loped through the Louvre, the Pitti, the Unzzi, the Vatican — all the galleries — and
through the pictured and frescoed churches of Venice, Naples, and the cathedrals
of Spain ; some of us said that certain of the great works of the old masters were
glorious creations of genius, (we found it out in the guide-book, though we got hold
of the wrong picture sometimes,) and the others said they were disgraceful old
daubs. We examined modern and ancient statuary with a critical eye in Florence^
Rome, or any where we found it, and praised it if we saw fit, and if we didn't we
said we preferred the wooden Indians in front of the cigar stores of America. But
AN OBITUARY. 647
the Holy Land brought out all our enthusiasm. We fell into raptures by the bar
ren shores of Galilee ; we pondered at Tabor and at Nazareth; we exploded into
poetry over the questionable loveliness of Esdraelon; we meditated at Jezreel and
Samaria over the missionary zeal of Jehu; we rioted — fairly rioted among the holy
places of Jerusalem ; we bathed in Jordan and the Dead Sea, reckless whether our
accident-insurance policies were extra-hazardous or not, and brought away so
many jugs of precious water from both places that all the country from Jericho to
the mountains of Moab will suffer from drouth this year, I think. Yet, the pil
grimage part of the excursion was its pet feature — there is no question about that.
After dismal, smileless Palestine, beautiful Egypt had few charms for us. "We
merely glanced at it and were ready for home.
They wouldn't let us land at Malta — quarantine ; they would not let us land in
Sardinia ; nor at Algiers, Africa; nor at Malaga, Spain, nor Cadiz, nor at the Ma
deira islands. So we got offended at all foreigners and turned our backs upon them
and came home. I suppose we only stopped at the Bermudas because they were
in the programme. "We did not care any thing about any place at all. "We
wanted to go home. Homesickness was abroad in the ship — it was epidemic. If
the authorities of New York had known how badly we had it, they would have
quarantined us here.
The grand pilgrimage is over. Good-bye to it, and a pleasant memory to it, I
am able to say in all kindness. I bear no malice, no ill-will toward any individ
ual that was connected with it, either as passenger or officer. Things I did not
like at all yesterday I like very well to-day, now that I am at home, and always
hereafter I shall be able to poke fun at the whole gang if the spirit so moves me to
do, without ever saying a malicious word. The expedition accomplished all that
its programme promised that it should accomplish, and we ought all to be satisfied
with the management of the matter, certainly. Bye-bye !
MARK TWAIN.
I call that complimentary. It is complimentary ; and yet I
never have received a word of thanks for it from the Hadjis ;
on the contrary I speak nothing but the serious truth when I
say that many of them even took exceptions to the article. In
endeavoring to please them I slaved over that sketch for two
hours, and had my labor for my pains. I never will do a gen
erous deed again.
CONCLUSION.
one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage
was ended ; and as I sit here at home in San Francisco
thinking, I am moved to confess that day by day the mass of
my memories of the excursion have grown more and more
pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encum
bered them flitted one by one out of my mind — and now, if
the Quaker City were weighing her anchor to sail away on the
very same cruise again, nothing could gratify me more than to
be a passenger. With the same captain and even the same
pilgrims, the same sinners. I was on excellent terms with
eight or nine of the excursionists (they are my staunch friends
yet,) and was even on speaking terms with the rest of the
sixty-five. I have been at sea quite enough to know that that
was a very good average. Because a long sea-voyage not only
brings out all the mean traits one has, and exaggerates them,
but raises up others which he never suspected he possessed, and
even creates new ones. A twelve months' voyage at sea would
make of an ordinary man a very miracle of meanness. On the
other hand, if a man has good qualities, the spirit seldom moves
him to exhibit them on shipboard, at least with any sort of em
phasis. Now I am satisfied that our pilgrims are pleasant old
people on shore ; I am also satisfied that at sea on a second
•voyage they would be pleasanter, somewhat, than they were on
our grand excursion, and so I say without hesitation that I
would be glad enough to sail with them again. I could at least
enjoy life with my handful of old friends. They could enjoy
life with their cliques as well — passengers invariably divide up
into cliques, on all ships.
CONCLUSION. 649
And I will say, here, that I would rather travel with an ex
cursion party of Methuselahs than have to be changing ships
and comrades constantly, as people do who travel in the ordi
nary way. Those latter are always grieving over some other
ship they have known and lost, and over other comrades whom
diverging routes have separated from them. They learn to
love a ship just in time to change it for another, and they be
come attached to a pleasant traveling companion only to lose
him. They have that most dismal experience of being jn a
strange vessel, among strange people who care nothing about
them, and of undergoing the customary bullying by strange
officers and the insolence of strange servants, repeated over
and over again within the compass of every month. They
have also that other misery of packing and unpacking trunks
— of running the distressing gauntlet of custom-houses — of
the anxieties attendant upon -getting a mass of baggage from
point to point on land in safety. I had rather sail with a
whole brigade of patriarchs than suffer so. We never packed
our trunks but twice — when we sailed from New York, and
when we returned to it. Whenever we made a land journey,
we estimated how many days we should be gone and what
amount of clothing we should need, figured it down to a math
ematical nicety, packed a valise or two accordingly, and left
the trunks on board. We chose our comrades from among our
old, tried friends, and started. We were never dependent
upon strangers for companionship. We often had occasion to
pity Americans whom we found traveling drearily among
strangers with no friends to exchange pains and pleasures
with. Whenever we were coming back from a land journey,
our eyes sought one thing in the distance first — the ship — and
when we saw it riding at anchor with the flag apeak, we felt
as a returning wanderer feels when he sees his home. When
we stepped on board, our cares vanished, our troubles were at
an end — for the ship was home to us. We always had the same
familiar old state-room to go to, and feel safe and at peace and
comfortable again.
I have no fault to find with the manner in which our excur-
650 CONCLUSION.
sion was conducted. Its programme was faithfully carried out
— a thing which surprised me, for great enterprises usually
promise vastly more than they perform. It would be well if
such an excursion could be gotten up every year and the sys
tem regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigot
ry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it
sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views
of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one
little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
The Excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among
the things that were. But its varied scenes and its manifold
incidents will linger pleasantly in our memories for many a
year to come. Always on the wing, as we were, and merely
pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the wonders of
half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid im
pressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holy day
flight has not been in vain — for above the confusion of vague
recollections, certain of its best prized pictures lift themselves
and will still continue perfect in tint and outline after their
surroundings shall have faded away.
We shall remember something of pleasant France ; and
something also of Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid
meteor, and was gone again, we hardly knew how or where.
We shall remember, always, how we saw majestic Gibraltar
glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset and swim
ming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again,
and her stately Cathedral with its marble wilderness of grace
ful spires. And Padua — Yerona — Como, jeweled with stars ;
and patrician Yenice, afloat on her stagnant flood — silent, des
olate, haughty — scornful of her humbled state — wrapping her
self in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and triumph, and
all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.
We can not forget Florence — Naples — nor the foretaste of
heaven that is in the delicious atmosphere of Greece — and
surely not Athens and the broken temples of the Acropolis.
Surely not venerable Rome — nor the green plain that com
passes her round about, contrasting its brightness with her
CONCLUSION. 651
gray decay — nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the
plain and clothe" their looped and windowed raggedness with
vines. We shall remember St. Peter's : not as one sees it
when he walks the streets of Rome and fancies all her domes
are just alike, but as he sees it leagues away, when every
meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome looms
superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace,
strongly outlined as a mountain.
We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus — the
colossal magnificence of Baalbec — the Pyramids of Egypt —
the prodigious form, the benignant countenance of the Sphynx
— Oriental Smyrna — sacred Jerusalem — Damascus, the " Pearl
of the East," the pride of Syria, the fabled Garden of Eden,
the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights, the old
est metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world that has
kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while
the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen
to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then
vanished and been forgotten !
SELLING BOOKS BY SUBSCRIPTION.
THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
— OF —
Are engaged in the publication of rare and valuable
Standard A^or
Selling them bj
SUBSCRIPTION ONLY.
By this method they reach directly the whole reading public,
multiply their sales ten fold, and place the works in the hands of
thousands whose attention otherwise would not be called to them.
This enables the publishers not only to give honorable and remu
nerative employment to a very large class of worthy persons act
ing as agents, but to expend largely upon their books in their prep
aration and publication, to illustrate them profusely and to sell
them at much lower prices than works of equal cost are sold by
the regular trade. They also are enabled by this method to main
tain an uniformity of price throughout the country, and to see
that all subscribers receive what they actually contract for.
THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
have universally given better books than they promised. They
look back with gratification over their list, and the unqualified praise
each volume has received from the press and the public. They
publish nothing but books worthy a place in the libraries of the
educated and the refined ; and such books, by their system of
agents, they bring to the direct notice of almost every person in
the country. No recommendations are given to the public except
those sent from voluntary sources ; and no unworthy meap.s are
taken to procure them.
We Want Agents Througliout the Country.
The sale of our works is an honorable and praiseworthy em
ployment, and is particularly adapted to disabled Soldiers, aged
and other Clergymen having leisure hours, Teachers and Students
during vacation, &c., Invalids unable to endure hard physical labor,
Young Men who wish to travel and gather knowledge and experi
ence by contact with the world, and all who can bring industry,
perseverance, and a determined will to the work. Women who
can devote time to the work, often make the bast of canvassers. Our
«erms to agents are very liberal ; we give exclusive territory to
operate in ; Catalogues and Circulars sent free upon application.
Address AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO., Hartford, Conn.
>sE\V AJSTJD KNI^ROEU EDITION-
OP
RICHARDSON'S
"BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI."
BROUGHT FORWARD TO THE SUMMER OF 1869,
DESCRIBING
THE OLD WEST AS IT WAS, and THE NEW WEST AS IT IS,
FROM THE GREAT RIVER TO THE GREAT OCEAN.
620 LARGE OCTAVO PAGES.— 216 ILLUSTRATIONS,
and the most Minute and Accurate Map of the country in existence.
1857 to 1869.
THE
OPEXI1VO OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD,
its Origin, Progress, and Completion, together with all the Great Changes in the
country incident thereto, are fully and faithfully described. It gives every Station on
the road, Distances apart, and such other Important Statistics as render it invaluable to all.
All other proposed Railroad Routes to the Pacific are found upon its map, and are
duly considered and explained. All subjects connected with these roads are fully
written up.
This work gives graphic accounts of the Progress of the Western half of our con
tinent, and the most romantic, stirring, and picturesque incidents in its history.
OF MORMONISM AND POLYGAMY IN UTAH,
With fine Illustrations of Life in Salt Lake city, of Brigham Young, his Wives,
Children, Residences, &c., &c.
Of the great NATURAL CURIOSITIES, of which there are more in Western
America than on all the globe beside : among which are the Rocky Mountains and
the Sierra Nevadas ; Pictured Rocks ; Lakes among the Clouds ; hundreds of Mineral
Springs ; Great Salt Lake and its Basin ; the Snake River Cataract of Idaho ; the
Great Falls of the Missouri ; the unapproached Scenery of Columbia River ; the
boundless Forests and beautiful Puget Sound of far Washington Territory ; Pike's
Peak; Long's Peak; Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount Rainer; the Geysers, Big
Tree Groves, and the stupendous Yosemite Valley of California.
It describes and gives views of THE BIG CANYON OF THE COLORADO
RIVER, 500 miles long, with the incredible journey of James White through it,
upon a raft, occupying 14 days, during 7 of which White was without food ; of THE
DISCOVERY AND OPENING UP of the
NEW WHITE PINE SILVER REGION OF NEVADA,
which is attracting thousands of emigrants and causing the wildest excitement ever
known in our mining history.
COMPLETE STATISTICS OF EACH STATE AND TERRITORY,
in Gold and Silver, and other Products, increase of Population, number of acres of
Public Land, value of same, surrounding Markets, with the inducements offered to
settlers, can be found in,its pages. No other book extant contains one-half the in
formation on the subject contained in this.
To the Emigrant, to the Traveler, and to all others whose interests or inclinations
draw their attention westward, this book will be invaluable, treating fully of this* part
of our country, its vast and unequalled resources, and of the comparative extent,
capabilities, and availabilities of its different sections, giving such information as can
be obtained from no other source.
CONDITIONS.
We sell this work with all additions at the original prices.
Bound in Fine English Cloth, $3 60
14 " " Gilt Edge, .... 4.00
Leather, (Library Style,) . . V .• -• 4.00
Agents wanted. Apply to AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO., Hartford, Ct.
ITS ORIGIN, TRUTH, AND DIVINITY.
Comprising an account of Patriarchs and Prophets, the scene of their labors, style
of their writings, character of their prophecies, and the time and manner of their
deaths. The Life of Christ, his teachings, miracles, death, resurrection and ascen
sion. The Lives and Labors of the Apostles, the Primitive Fathers, the Martyrs and
other prominent defenders of the Christian Faith, with an exposition of the nature,
design, effect, and final triumph of Christianity. Giving in a condensed form, a re
liable and comprehensive survey of the Christian Church, from the early ages down
to modern times.
EMBRACING A TERM OP OVER 3000 YEARS.
BY J. E. STEBBINS.
Eighteen Fine Steel Engravings,
In the various styles of the art and by the be/ft artists, with a large map of ancient
countries and localities, will adorn its pages, and will alone equal in value the cost of
the book.
CONDITIONS:
The Book will be printed, bound and finished in a very superior manner, in modern
style, excelling in all points. It will contain over six hundred pages and be sold
through our authorized agents only.
DELIVERED TO SUBSCRIBERS AT THE FOLLOWING PRICES.
, Extra fine English cloth, marble edge, ----- §3.50
" gilt " - 4.00
Library style, (Leather) sprinkled edge, - - 4.00
Half calf, marble edge, - 5.00
Agents Wanted. Apply to AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.,
Hartford, Conn.
~ NEW QUARTO PHOTOGRAPH
14MIli¥
With Marginal References, Apochrypha, Concordance, an Index,
Family Record, The Psalms of David in Metre;
A Table of Texts ; a Table of Kindred and affinity ; a Table of Scripture weights and meas
ures; a Table of Offices and Condition of Men; a Table of Paxsages in the Old
Testament quoted by Christ and His Apostles; and what ha* never
been added, an Account of the Lives and Martyrdom of
THE APOSTLES AND EVANGELISTS.
ILLUSTRATED WITH BEAUTIFUL STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
NOTICE^TO^SUB?CRIB E RS.
Our NEW PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM FAMILY BIBLE, whieh we take pleasure in presenting to
the public through our traveling agents, forms a new and attractive feature in Bible making, which
at once commends itself to eve y home and fireside. The Family Bible, with its record of Mar
riages, Births and Deaths, has ever been held as a sacred household treasure, and the present edition
has, in connection with its register, an arrangement in album form by which Family Portraits may
be preserved within its sacred lids ; making in reality what it purports to be, a Family Bible. It is
adapted to Family wants— every family should have it— it fills a void long felt in family circles, and
we anticipate for it a large and rapid sale.
OO^TIDITIOISr S.
The work is printed on good paper, with TEN Fine Steel Engravings, and beautifully bound in
various styles.
Prices varying from $6.50 to $i$oe,
Agents Wanted. Apply to
AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO,, Hartford, Conn.
PERSONAL HISTORY OF
ft
ILLUSTRATED WITH
Twenty-five New and Elegant Pull Page Engravings,
In Steel and Wood, among which are two of General Grant, by the best Artists in the conn-
try. Also, Fac-simileB of Hare Documents, Public and Private, the famous I'nconditional-Sur-
render, and other equally interesting and important Letters, from Originals intrusted to the au
thor by General Grant and his friends.
THE >IO«T P»OI?TJI^j\.Ti BOOK OF THE
This volume contains many Documents and Letters of the Highest Importance, relating to
Civil and Military Matters, SINCE THE WAK, which have never before been made public.
By ALBERT D. RICHARDSON,
AUTHOB OP "FIELD, DUNGEON, AND ESCAPE," AND "BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI."
AUTHENTIC, AUTHORIZED AND APPROVED,
Written with the knowledge, consent, and full concurrence of the illustrious General.
In view of the prominent position now occupied by General Grant, it must be conceded by all
that a full and truthful history of him, should lind its way into the hands of every reader.
No American citizen should live under any President with whose character and antecedents,
both public and private, he is not perfectly familiar.
This work differs very essentially from the many " LIVES OF GRANT,'' now before the public,
and should by no means be classified with them. While recording his illustrious achievements
both in the Field and in the Cabinet, it is yetpM-soual, ratlier than, martial, or political,
free from military technicalities or partisan coloring, d 'picting not merely the exploits of Grant,
the soldier, but the entire life of Grant the man, his daily habits and conversation, his thoughts,
and his motives, as evinced by his acts and his words, under all of the many different circum
stances of his eventful career, giving, in fact, a full and clear exhibit of the inner, as well as the
outer man. It has not been prepared for a campaign document, but for the library, and it hae
been admitted by all to be a great acquisition to the biographical literature of the country, it
contains 500 pages, and in mechanical execution is fully up to ou%well known style. Its eub-
cription price is,
Beautifully Bound in Fine Cloth, Sprinkled Edge, - - • $3.00
Gilt Edge, .... 3.50
" Leather, Library Style, .... 4.00
Elegantly Bound in Extra Half Calf, or Half Turkey, - . 5.00
Agents Wanted, Apply to AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO., Hartford, Conn
THE GREAT METROPOLIS
By JUNIUS HHINRI BROWNE.
The author of this work needs no endorsement. His well known signature, as a leading and
popular correspondent of the press, is welcomed at thousands of firesides in the land. His hab
its of close observation, his long experience as a journalist, and his acknowledged talents as a
writer have all been drawn upon and concentrated for months upon this work.
Reflecting every phase of Metropolitan life and society, giving life-like pictures of the inter
esting localities aiid peculiar institutions of New York, the manners and customs of every class
of its people; their modes and habits of life; how and where they live; the great contest for
wealth existing among them, and how it is gained and how lost; revealing scenus of wickedness
and of misery ; exposing the tricks of the dishonest, and the traps laid for the unwary ; in fact,
showing up the whole inner life of the great heart of our country, in a manner and with a full
ness never equalled. This volume is respectfully offered by the publishers, with implicit faith
in its great value as a book of profit and amusement.
This work is embellished by
* Over Twenty Appropriate and Spirited Engravings.
and is a most beautiful and attractive octavo volume of 700 pages,
It is sold exclusively by Agents and can be obtained from no other source, and is delivered to
subscribers,
Elegantly Bound in Fancy Cloth, Gilt Back and Sides, Sprinkled Edge, ' - $8.00
" Gilt Edge, - - 3.50
Leather, (Library Style.) Sprinkled Edge, - - . 4.00
Extra Half Caif, or Half Turkey, . - - 6.00
%3&~£jiyment to be made upon receipt of the work.
Agents Wanted, Apply to AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO,, Hartford, Conn
THE GREAT REBELLION.
A HISTORY. OF THE
Embracing an authentic account of the whole contest,
BY HON. J. T. HEADLEY,
Author of "Napoleon and his Marshals,1' "Washington and his Generals," '• Sacred
Mountains," &c.
ENGKLISH AND GKERMAN.
THIS GREAT WORK commences with the first outbreak of the war, and gives a full
and truthful account of the terrible struggle to its very end, and closing with the Re
ports of Generals Grant and Sherman.
Noting each important and interesting event, with time and place of its occurrence,
with perfect accuracy, stating only as facts those things which are well authenticated,
this work cannot fail, ere long, to be accepted by all as a STANDARD AUTHORITY, and
as such will prove of immense value toils possessors as a BOOK FOR REFERENCE, and
no library will be considered complete without a copy of it upon its shelves.
This work is printed from a beautiful, clear, new type, on good paper, and is illus
trated with over seventy first-class Steel Engravings, consisting of Military and Naval
Scenes, and Portraits of Officers prominent in the war.
It will be beautifully and substantially bound in One Superb Volume of nearly
Twelve Hundred Pages.
Price, Library Style, (Leather) Sprinkled Edge, - $5.00
Embossed Morocco, do do 5.00
do do Gilt do - - 5.50
Agents Wanted. Apply to AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.,
Hartford, Conn.
THE SECRET SERVICE,
The Field, The Dungeon and The Escape.
By ALBERT D. RICHARDSON, (Tribune Correspondent.)
The above work embraces the entire narrative of
Mr. RICHARDSON'S Unparalled Experience for Four Years.
I. Traveling through the South in the secret service of the Tribune at the outbreak of the War.
II. With our armies an<l fleets both East and West, during the first two years'of the Rebellion.
III. his thrilling capture while running the batteries on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg,where
more than half his companions were either killed or wounded.
IV. His confinement lor twenty months in seven different Rebel Prisons.
V. His escape and almost Miraculous Journey by night, of nearly 400 miles, aided by Negroes and
Union Mountaineers of North Carolina and Tennessee through the enemy's country to our lines.
it abounds in stirring events never before given to the public, and contains minute details of
the escape, which have not yet appeared, including a description <-f DAN ELLIS, the famous Union
Pilot, and the "UNKNOWN GDIDE," in the person of a Young Lady, who piloted Mr.
Richardson and his comrades by night out of a Rebel ambush.
In view of the author's rich material, his well known trustworthiness, and graphic descriptive
powers, the publishers feel justified in predicting a work of unusual interest, containing more of
the FACT, INCIDENT A^D ROMANCE OF THE WAR, than any other which has yet appeared.
The work is offered in the best style of typography, on good paper, andcontaini over 500 Octavo
Pages and, Nineteen Engravings.
Price, Cloth, (neat and substantial,) .-,.... $3.00
Library Style, (Leather) Sprinkled Edges, - 3.50
The book is published in the German language, same styles of binding, and same prices.
Agents Wanted. Apply to AMEEIOAN PUBLISHING CO,,
Eartford, Conn.
RETURN TO: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
198 Main Stacks
LOAN PERIOD 1
Home Use
Books may be renewed by calling
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW
•
SEP 0 7 2
FORM NO. DD6
50M 6-00
BERKELEY
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11